By Claire Burnett, The Current Features Editor
Over the past few weeks, Wordle has become immensely popular across the world. Players have six tries to guess a five letter word and after each guess, the letter tiles change color to signify how close the guess was. The letter will turn green if it is in the word and the right spot, yellow if it is in the word but in the incorrect spot, and gray if it is not in the word at all. The word changes daily and all players have the same word, including words like aroma, sugar, cynic, and ulcer.
Wordle was created by Josh Wardle, a software engineer from Brooklyn, because his partner enjoys word games. He decided to release the game to the public after it became very popular within his family.
River Hill is no exception to Wordle’s worldwide spike in popularity. Many students and staff have enjoyed the strategic word game, including junior Amanda Xu, who commented “I think that it’s something fun to look forward to every day.” Sophomore Shruti Vadlakonda agrees, stating “I think that it’s a really good pastime for whenever I’m bored. It reminds me of sudoku.”
After completing the daily Wordle, players can share their results with friends. However, to prevent spoiling the word, players can share a premade emoji grid with green, yellow, and gray square emojis. With Wordle’s simple rules and ability to connect people, it’s no wonder that it has gained popularity at River Hill and across the globe.
Despite Wordle’s popularity, many players have remarked that oftentimes the words are too difficult to guess, or that it is an uncommon word that they have never heard before. Amanda commented “Sometimes the difficulty varies. Some days it’s really easy and other days it’s really hard.” Sophomore Divya Kumar agrees, adding “It’s a hit or miss honestly.” Shruti also mentioned “I think the words are not hard, but for me it’s really hard when I’m given the letters and have to figure out a word.”
To combat the difficultness, many players use a starting word, which is the word that they use first in order to learn more about the actual word. When asked about her starting word, Divya mentioned “I like to use something that has multiple vowels in it. I know that some people use crane or weary because they have a lot of vowels.”
Last week, the New York Times purchased Wordle for over $1 million. Along with the ownership switch, the url was changed from powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle to https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html. The New York Times has said that for now, Wordle will remain free. Reflecting on the purchase, Amanda commented “I hope they don’t change it, I like it the way it is.”For players who can’t get enough Wordle, an abundance of fan-made, Wordle-inspired games have been released, including Wordle Unlimited, which is essentially Wordle with an endless amount of rounds; Nerdle, with mathematical equations; and Worldle, with countries.