Move Over New York Times Crossword – Wordle Is Here

First, it was the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. Now, Wordle has taken the crown as NU’s new trending game and low-key addiction. If you haven’t heard of Wordle, here’s the breakdown:

Wordle is an online daily word game. The goal is to guess a five letter word in six tries, with every try cluing you in on what letters you’re getting correct. There are three different colors: black for when the letter is not a part of the word, yellow when the letter is in the word but in the wrong spot, and green when the letter is in the right place. 

The game has skyrocketed in popularity with over 300,000 people playing it daily, according to the New York Times. Even Google has switched its icon so that when you Google “Wordle” the classic tiles of the game animate to spell out the browser’s name. Which is why it came as no surprise when people found out that, earlier this week on Monday, the New York Times Company bought the game for around seven figures. 

Have you done the Wordle today?

Trent: I actually did do it in my last class. 

But where did Wordle come from? Created by Brooklyn software engineer Josh Wardle, the game was released back in October – but became a sensation in mid-January. 

I decided to ask Northwestern students what got them interested in playing the game. Medill student Trent Brown told me he saw Wordle on Twitter for the first time. 

Trent: Um, I definitely saw it on Twitter and saw people posting those weird emoji squares. I was like, “What is going on?” And then I saw in like a random Twitter reply, someone explained what it was and linked it. And I was like, “Oh, this seems fun.” And then I kind of got hooked because it’s so simple and easy. 

I also asked students what their go-to Wordle start word was. 

Trent: Okay so I used to start with Adieu – like the French word – but then me and my friend would share our responses and he clued in on that I started with Adieu so he basically got like a free guess. Cause he could suss out which of those letters were in it. So now I just kind of go with whatever is the vibe of the day. 

WNUR News’ own Sara Kadoura, our executive producer, said she actually doesn’t have one.

Sara: I don’t have one. I just feel like it’s more fair if I – I mean nobody made that rule but me – to do a different one every day. But I usually try to make sure that it has at least two vowels and like some common consonants so I do like irate…audio is a good one. Yeah. 

And WNUR reporter Allison Rauch also likes to use the word Adieu.

Allison: My start word? Adieu because I feel like – that’s A-D-I-E-U – like French for “Bye,” right? Because you get most of the vowels. So I think it’s a good eliminator.

Programmer and game developer Tyler Glaiel wrote an article for Medium on the most mathematically correct Wordle start word. Glaiel says that the word ROATE (R-O-A-T-E) is the best start word, while RAISE (R-A-I-S-E) may be the best word if you want to go the extra mile and impressively land it on your first guess…which there is a 1 in a 2,315 chance of getting. 

I decided to try this out myself and this was the result.

*Frustrated sounds of playing Wordle lol*

Now go forth and take on your Wordle of the day if you haven’t already!

For WNUR News, this was Maria Caamaño.