I feel a sense of responsibility for the players,' he told The Guardian. 'It going viral doesn't feel great to be honest. However, the rapid attention can be overwhelming. Wardle said the rejection of those engagement tricks might have fueled the game's popularity after all - 'where the rejection of some of those things has actually attracted people to the game because it feels quite innocent and it just wants you to have fun with it.' He deliberately didn't include push notifications, allow users to play endlessly or build in other tools commonly used today to pull users into playing apps for as long as possible. 'Making Wordle I specifically rejected a bunch of the things you're supposed to do for a mobile game,' Wardle told NPR. You don't have to sign up with your email or give personal information to play.Īrts & Life Regardless Of What You Think, 'Irregardless' Is A Word And Wardle did it without ads or gimmicks. The app really started picking up steam in October, and as of Monday it has more than 2.7 million players, Wardle told NPR's Morning Edition.

Shah also helped with some of the development. The free game was created by software engineer Josh Wardle of New York City, who made Wordle - a riff on his name - originally for his partner, Palak Shah, who is a fan of word games. It's the same word every day for everyone, and you can play only once a day. Once you finish, you can post on Twitter how many guesses it took without spoiling the challenge for others. After each guess, the tiles change colors to show which letters are not in the word (gray), which letters are in the word but in the wrong position (yellow) and which ones are correctly in the word and in the right position (green). In Wordle, you have six guesses to figure out the five-letter word.Ī simple word game is the newest social media and pop culture phenomenon: Wordle.

Word to do