The code design is also very elegant in its simplicity.<p>You have two static lists of words in the JS code - known words, and a smaller, random pre-shuffled list of words the game will select from.<p>The selection is done on the client, by date, from the second list - every day at midnight (your local time!) the next word in the pre-shuffled list is selected - no hashing or randomizing or anything. No cookies are involved in making you play one game per day, no server side calls are involved in gameplay at all. And yes, this means that changing your time zone will let you play tomorrow's game, and that you can just view source to know tomorrow's word - it appears right after today's word in the code.<p>This is so counter to how we usually design software in so many ways, it's just delightful.
I actually think the OP and the comments are too focused on the programmer-related aspects of this. I'll add a few things.<p>1. It's not trivial but it's not that hard if you have a decent vocabulary and some intuitive sense for word frequencies (and word pair frequencies) for different locations in a word. The answer list does not seem to include really hard words as naively picking all the words in the MW dictionary would be. It's a fun 10-15 minute puzzle.<p>2. Five letter seems like something of a sweet spot.<p>3. The answer word list does not appear to have a lot of plurals or common vowel endings for past tense, etc. Or obscure words.<p>4. It lends itself to what I'll casual cheating, i.e. there are easy ways to get some hints without giving the answers away while focusing on a strategy.<p>5. Basically, it's got good gameplay for a casual game. It would be easy to build something along similar lines that didn't have as fun gameplay for a casual gamer.
One more factor in Wordle's popularity that I haven't yet seen commentators identify much. The game's word roster tilts heavily toward words with neutral or cheerful connotations.<p>So your brain conjures up something happy at the end. You don't slog through the puzzle solving to end up with VIRUS, ENNUI, GRIEF, SLAVE, INANE or other such morose words.<p>Instead, we get the likes of AWAKE, BLUSH, FOCAL, etc. That helps make the game a mood-stabilizer or even brightener. We're usually clever enough to find a solution most days. When we're slow and need all six turns, we get a cheery "Whew!" to console us. It's a simple, barely noticeable bit of gamification at its nicest.
I've also begun to thing of Wordle as a meme. I know virtually anything could be framed as a meme, but there's specific aspects of Wordle and its rise in popularity that make it a particularly apt description. Its viral spread was fast and resonant. It's super easy to consume. Think pieces dissecting it end up in mainstream publications. The story about its origin gets mythologized.<p>And, most importantly: unending riffs on the base meme. There's basically infinite Wordle clones with slightly (or very) different rules. And the shared results themselves can be riffed on as well. It's done a thing that's usually reserved for image memes: it's created a whole new language that people are using to make fun(ny) things.<p>It's just really interesting to see that happen with a game.
The OP does a terrific job detailing the simple beauty of Wordle.<p>Is it OK if we like it more because it was born out of love?:
‘Wordle is a love story’
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/technology/wordle-word-game-creator.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/technology/wordle-word-ga...</a><p>And in the space of a month went from ‘introduced in NY Times’ to ‘bought by NY Times’?<p>‘The New York Times Buys Wordle’
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/business/media/new-york-times-wordle.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/business/media/new-york-t...</a><p>In many ways, I think this is the perfected ideal of what engineer-creators hope for.<p>The intense focus on making something that feels magical for one - even better that that one is magical to you.<p>Sharing the creation with a few friends and having them experience the magic too.<p>And having the world recognize, and then pay $ millions, for your creation done in the name of love.<p>No years lost in the lab, no fighting with corporate suits to keep ads out, no long marches of ‘growth’ tactics that feel icky.<p>It is the Romantic Ideal of Engineering.<p>Does any other story come close?
I'm surprised how infrequently I see anyone commenting on the wordle tile-flipping animation.<p>It's... really nice? I like to watch it. I suspect I'm not alone, and if the tiles simply changed color in an instant without animation, wordle would not be as successful.
Good design is often subtle and easy to dismiss, especially for smart engineers. You might remember the "What's the deal? It's just mastermind with letters" comments here and elsewhere. I agree with the article that Wordle got many little things right, and I think that's a huge part of its success.<p>I wonder how long it will stay that way under NY Times ownership. Just today, I was greeted with a new cookie prompt that covered up the keyboard on mobile Safari and wouldn't disappear without a refresh. Not a good sign of things to come.
You can’t explain its success by product greatness only.<p>I mean sure wordle is fine. But the no-ad and once-a-day features are what the new york times has been doing for years (and yes it works really well). There are probably _thousands_ of other mini games that are no-ad and once-a-day.<p>The sharing part is pretty cool. It does encourage bragging and probably played a big role in its virality. But yet again, there must be plenty of other games that do that well (and we’ll likely see an awful lot more of them).<p>Again I do think that wordle is pretty good, but its success is more easily explained by lucky timing and reaching some big influencers early rather than amazingly smart design.<p>The reason I am posting this is that I think people shouldn’t think that if they build something as good they will have the same success. And I find it a bit dishonest to say “oh of course it had some success, it’s so great” after the fact.
I'm a huge fan of the plain text share functionality that Wordle uses (introduced?). Loving it in the various clones that are coming out as well and I hope it becomes a common "simple share" approach in other applications.
What has been driving me a little nuts about it is the amount of luck involved with getting the word in a few tries. I can reliably get the word in 4 tries give or take. But when you hit something equivalent to *AR you can guess BAR, CAR, PAR, MAR, TAR, JAR, FAR, etc. The number of times I got 4 out of 5 letters on the second try just to finally get the word on the 5th or 6th try feels like I am cheated of a victory.
In addition to everything else already discussed — the game is really well done, the sharing feature is inspired, the animations are delightful, etc — the thing about Wordle that makes it so universally popular is that it’s a very easy game that is experientially difficult. You have 6 guesses of 5 letters. There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet. Anyone in the top few deciles of verbal ability should hardly ever lose (if ever, really; I’ve played about 50 times and never “lost”). People further down in verbal ability will still win quite often.<p>And yet…it actually does engage your brain quite a bit! Despite being ultimately very easy, which people find rewarding, the experience feels challenging.<p>This is an odd combo. I’m having trouble thinking of any other games with this property. It’s more like a word search than a crossword puzzle. It takes work to complete a word search, but everybody has the tools to do it.
> but not in an annoying way like Farmville Facebook notifications. Shared Wordle games actively improve your experience by adding a social factor.<p>It's no different than any other social games. It's still novel, so people don't call it annoying ... yet<p>I like the idea of sharing everywhere with a picture or emojis, because it means the game has no archive or hall of fame, which means users are incentivized to store it in their social media, which made it more viral. IT's a clever way to escape the limitations of social media platforms. But OTOH without archive or some long-term goal most people will find it pointless and give up soon.<p>The article seems to imply that wordle is the first game that did all those things. That's not true, each of those elements has been done before, but this game does contain a combination of them.
<a href="https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordle" rel="nofollow">https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordle</a><p><i>mechanics are nearly identical to the 1955 pen-and-paper game Jotto and the US television game show Lingo</i><p><i>He had created a similar prototype in 2013, the prototype allowed for endless play, with players able to play puzzles immediately after each other, and its wordlist was unfiltered.</i><p><i>In mid-October 2021, he made it public after it "rapidly became an obsession" with relatives</i><p><i>The game became a viral phenomenon on Twitter in late December 2021, after Wardle added a sharing element to the game, letting users copy their results in the form of a grid of colored square emoji. The feature was inspired by a group of friends from New Zealand</i>
> It also brings players back into the game, but not in an annoying way like Farmville Facebook notifications.<p>As someone who doesn't play, it's getting more and more annoying. Especially now that there's stuff like Wordle Except It's Four Games At Once demanding space on my social timelines.
Having implemented my own 5-letter word game, I can agree that much finesse lies under the covers. Wordii is for the impatient, letting you play more often if you choose:<p><a href="https://frequal.com/wordii/" rel="nofollow">https://frequal.com/wordii/</a><p>The many subtleties of this genre make it a great programming challenge. I encourage developers to try making their own version. I think you'll come away with a healthy respect for Mr. Wardle.
Not directly related to the article, but I was just wondering what the best word to start wordle with is - and I think it is ATONE.<p>I arrived there by looking at the most frequent letters in english from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency</a> and putting them into an anagram solver at <a href="https://www.thewordfinder.com/anagram-solver/" rel="nofollow">https://www.thewordfinder.com/anagram-solver/</a><p>There is no five letter word from ETAOI (the five most frequent letters) but there are some from ETAOIN (the top six), namely atone, eatin, entia, oaten, tenia and tinea.<p>Wordle doesn't recognize most of these, but it does recognize atone
I don't know if this is relevant, but it's been driving me nuts.<p>Wordle is a game that was on the speak and spell in like 1990. It had a different name. It taught me how to spell a lot of words, and especially about patterns of where letters are found.<p>It was actually my favorite game on the toy at the time, so maybe that says something about it just being a fairly fun game whether you get one word or not... I totally support turning this into an educational game for elementary school kids though, that really seems like how it's a smart game. It teaches you not just spelling but how letters combine, it's amazing.<p>edit: Let them get addicted to spelling instead of, I dunno, youtube. For adults maybe one a day totally makes sense. For kids? Let them go wild.
One of the subtle ways he didn't mention is that the words seem to use medium-frequency letters, so they aren't an obvious guess, but it isn't some word with no vowels or a bunch of z's, either. I did notice that after the NYT took over the words now seem to have fewer letters, so it's more necessary to logic out which word it is if you want a good score. Previously I could figure out what most of the letters were with three words, but now I have to work at it. At least until I can come up with well-chosen words for the new regime.
My friends and I love Wordle. I made a Discord bot that picks a random French word every day at 8 AM and 8 PM, and we guess it in the chat. I added a rule so that you can't make two guesses in a row, in other words players must take turns making guesses, so one person cannot just brute force the game immediately.<p>We don't limit ourselves to 5 letter words, and it's really fun when the word is very long. Sometimes it takes a long time to find the word!<p>A weird issue is finding a list of words that contains every valid French word. It's harder than I thought. I'm not talking about the target words here, but the valid ones that you can use to guess. I thought the 300,000 word list I had found would be good enough, but some pretty basic words such as "Parabolique" are missing. The correct solution would probably be to use a dictionary file instead, instead of a plain list, but I'm not sure there's a python library to parse dictionary files, say the ones from libreoffice.<p>Also a fun bug was that since I use two completely different lists for the target words and the valid words (the target words list is a list of pretty common French words, it contains ten times fewer words than the valid words list, and it comes from another Internet source), there were words in the target word list but not the valid word list. Due to the order of the checks I do, the target word was deemed incorrect! My friends were certain they had found the correct word, the clues only allowed for one word, but it was rejected again and again. Now I've made sure the target word list is strictly a subset of the bigger list.
>>Some people say the biggest difference between an engineer and a senior engineer is not on the code they write, but on the senior engineer ability to figure out ways to not write code.<p>YES!!<p>The thing I spent the most time on when coding was to avoid writing code.<p>* All code takes longer to run than the no-op<p>* The greatest performance/speed gains are not from optimizing, but from entirely eliminating chunks of code.<p>* All code is habitat for bugs, the more habitat, the more...<p>* More code can unnecessarily obfuscate the structure of the app, and ability to reason about it<p>Some time later, the same principle came up in a seemingly very different field of sportscar racing, when my driving coach asked me "What are the things you do that slow the car down?". I thought of some mistakes I was making, but he pointed me to the big basics - "turning and braking", followed by discussion that the most basic thing to do was to avoid turning and braking. Now obviously, some of both will be needed as soon as you approach the end of the starting straight — the point is to do only the absolute minimum, and that often takes a LOT of work to figure out how to NOT do something.<p>Same applies for writing code - avoid it at all costs, and write only the absolutely required minimum.<p>It is effort well spent
I may be completely wrong but, after playing 3 or 4 times, I got the feeling that this game is very easy and involves more luck than skill or strategy. It looks and feels like a puzzle so you get the feeling of having solved something but have you, really? If you find the word in 3 tries 90% of the time, does it mean you're actually better at the game than someone who usually needs 4 or 5 attempts? Or are you just a little luckier?
the only design flaw i see is that the color blind mode colors are not intuitive choices.<p>I'm not color blind but I play with some friends who are, I have to switch color pallets to share results.<p>in color blind mode its light blue for right letter wrong spot and orange for right letter right spot.
mentally, to me this is the wrong war around.. and it drives me nuts and forces mistakes on my end.
I'd mentioned how Wordle clones failed to copy its success because they didn't understand what made it unique before, the article does a decent job too: <a href="https://twitter.com/esesci/status/1481734261434507268" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/esesci/status/1481734261434507268</a>
It's also interesting in how modest and personal it is. There are no global scoreboards, so there's no "anonymous competitiveness." Nobody cares about your scores except your personal relationships, which allows it to not care about exploits.
For those who want to ruin the fun, I threw together some javascript that gives you suggestions as you play. Link [1]. There are chrome extensions that probably do this better, but I had fun making this.<p>[1] <a href="https://gist.github.com/coertg/e8d0fc66c3a56a3c3490c77b7f8122d0" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/coertg/e8d0fc66c3a56a3c3490c77b7f812...</a>
Sharing a Wordle result is the first application of coloured emojis that has been useful to me. Laughing or crying faces and hearts are nice, but don't really offer much over text emoticons like :-), <3 and such. But this method of sharing was not possible before coloured boxes were available as characters.
Effectively there are 2 wordles at the moment - the my times link has a different word and I was using the old uk link and so my partner and I are having different words. Pretty funny/an opportunity to do the ‘crossword’ twice a day! (For however long they keep it up!)
Author does hit the mark pointing out its elegance.<p>The game's word-size of 5 limits binging. I went back to play some of the first few words and found that I got sick of the game very quickly.<p>It'd be interesting to hear the creator of Wordle explain their decisions.
Yet another flappy bird kind of a thing that caught on. It seems pretty boring to me and I don't wonder at all why I didn't have this idea first.<p>It's pretty much a crossword variation.
Did you know… that if you use a letter multiple times but it’s used fewer than that, the extra letters are grayed out - this surprised me but it’s correct to do it
I manage to get the word on my last try and it was very satisfying. I've never seen this game before. I was a little sad you only get one word a day.
If we’re honest, is Wordle not popular because it’s a trivially easy game just obfuscated enough to convince us we’ve done something clever each day? It’s only slightly more taxing than rolling a d6 and tweeting the result.
Wordle is a spam engine. The game isn't that difficult -- it's been solved by several folks and it can always be won. The "share" button is the spam engine.<p>If you play to enjoy it and don't press "share", well done.
If you press "share", be ready to burn in the level of hell reserved for spammers.<p>Fortunately, the NYT will screw this up and try to monetise it which will destroy its popularity in a short time.