The “Wordle” Revolution

The New York Times word game Wordle has become the new social media obsession. Wordle exploded in popularity at the cusp of the new year; in November, the game had 90 players, but now it has over 5 million, based on a study conducted by Smithsonian Magazine. You’ve probably seen people posting about how many moves they needed to guess the day’s word, and you’ve probably tried it yourself. You have probably become addicted to playing like I have. But why has this extremely simple game become so damn popular?

First, let’s define what Wordle is. 

Wordle is a word guessing game. You have six guesses, and the aim is to figure out a five-letter word. After every guess, you get feedback about which of the five letters you guessed correctly. You can play on your phone, tablet and/or computer. It’s a very simple idea and a very simple, minimalistic visual display. Some of the game's popularity could indubitably be explained by the simplicity of the game itself. But there is more. 

One crucial feature of Wordle is that you can only do one word puzzle per day: there’s one word and that's it. So it’s not possible to overindulge and get bored with it. The Wordle creators knew exactly what they were doing. The one word per day is the same for everyone. Given that it is the same word that everyone needs to guess on any given day, this makes it easy to compare your results on social media. Being able to share results with friends so easily introduced a rather engaging and interactive element to the game as well. 

Wordle brings us all together and allows us to share some intellectual challenges. Wordle reveals just how competitive and insecure we are too. It’s about trying to feel superior to others, according to Psychology Today. We do better than our peers when we need fewer guesses. This helps us to feel that we are in the top percentile of English language users. And there is plenty of empirical evidence that suggests that this is something we care deeply about in our society. 

Wordle is so popular because it has the perfect combination of challenge, meaning, and insight. All in all, our society is hooked on Wordle for both pretty good and bad reasons. Wordle brings us all closer together through the game’s intrinsic and intellectual components, but it also manipulates our deepest insecurities.