What is Wordle? Daily word game goes viral on Twitter

wordleJosh Wardle/powerlanguage

Twitter users have been posting green and yellow squares in the masses lately thanks to the daily word game Wordle going viral on the platform. But what exactly is it?

If you’ve been on the social media website at all in early January, you will have no doubt seen people tweeting a bunch of colored squares with something like “Wordle 201 3/6” above it.

This can be confusing if you don’t know what “Wordle” means or what it is – don’t worry, you’re not alone. Here’s everything you need to know about the viral game.

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wordle tweetsTwitter / Josh Wardle/powerlanguage
Wordle tweets have been going viral in January 2022.

What is Wordle?

In short, Wordle is a word game that can only be played once per day via your internet browser. It involves figuring out what a word is by the process of elimination.

Green means you’ve guessed a letter correctly and in the right place, gray means the word doesn’t contain that letter, and yellow means it does include it but it’s in the wrong place. You have to get it right within six tries or you lose.

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Once you’ve beaten the daily challenge, you have the option to share your result to Twitter, which is what has been appearing on feeds in the masses in early 2022.

wordleWordle
The game released back in October.

It was created by New Yorker Josh Wardle, who originally developed it for his wife who is a huge fan of word puzzles. “It’s something that encourages you to spend three minutes a day and that’s it,” he told the New York Times in an interview.

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In the same article, it was revealed that over 300,000 people play Wordle daily as opposed to just 90 back in November 2021, probably thanks to the power of Twitter and people wondering what the squares they were seeing all over their feeds are.