Wordle has been all the rage lately with a varying audience of both young and old, but let’s look further into exactly what it is. Essentially, Wordle is a game where you must guess a five-letter word in six tries or less. The word is the same for everyone playing and changes each day, and you can only try to guess it once per day. Wordle was created by Josh Wardle who released it in October of 2021. As of November 1st, only 90 people had played the game, but it now has millions of people all around the world playing daily. Wordle is different from other word games in that each player is attempting to guess the same word, every day. This can help players feel more connected with the Wordle community and more excited about playing the game each day. Some issues can arise from this, however. For example, if one player were to tell another player the word of the day, it can ruin the game for them.
We interviewed a few people about their personal opinions on Wordle. Most of them play Wordle daily, so long as they remember to. When questioned about what it is that they like about Wordle, there were a variety of answers, such as “I feel accomplished that I completed the Wordle,” “because it’s challenging,” “because I’m competitive,” and “because I have nothing better to do.” Some of our interviewees were very passionate about the game, while others didn’t really care for it. One person, who has asked to remain anonymous, was extremely upset when one of her friends told her the word(s) of the day before she had the chance to play it. When we asked if she had ever had a word spoiled for her, she told me “Yes!... [name of friend]! He’s a jerk. He’s still my friend, but he’s a jerk. He spoiled ten days! He found a way to get the upcoming ten days and posted them to Facebook. I was so mad!” She was very upset about this because for some people, the game really means a lot to them.
There are others, however, who don’t play Wordle often or don’t even like the game at all, such as one of our interviewees who would also like to remain anonymous. He told us that he has tried Wordle but doesn't like it because “it’s stupid.” He claims that the only reason Wordle became so popular is because “people are losing their minds and have nothing to do.” He instead plays Globle, a similar game but with countries instead of words. He highly recommends Globle as it is “much more fun” than Wordle. Other than Globle, there have been variations of Wordle, such as Nerdle, Worldle, Quordle, etc. These new games have used the same format or style of the original game but switched it up a bit.
In terms of difficulty of the game, the words are relatively common, but not too easily guessable. One person that we asked said that he thinks that the difficulty “changes day to day. Really, some days are easy and other days are harder.” Most other people agreed with this saying that the words are easy to guess “not at first, but after a few tries.” Like most things, how easy or difficult it is “really depends on how good you are at the game,” as one of our interviewees put it.
The final question that we sought to answer about Wordle is why it gained so much popularity so quickly. When asking about this, I received some mixed opinions, but most fall along the lines of “people need distractions,” or “people are really bored with themselves.” All in all, Wordle is a great idea for those who are into word games and enjoy a challenge.
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