The puzzle game Wordle has taken the hearts of puzzlers all over the world by storm. The combination of hangman and Scrabble is almost addictive. Try it out! Wordle started out smaller than you would think.

Gray, yellow, and green tiles in various arrangements found in large numbers on Twitter every day. What at first glance looks like a pointless pattern is connected to a tricky word puzzle – and a real trend.

British software developer John Wardle is behind the game. He actually just wanted to develop a word puzzle for his family and friends. In the Corona lockdown of 2020, Wardle and his girlfriend Palak Shah searched in vain for a way to deal with the nagging boredom. Shah was a big fan of other word puzzles like The New York Times Spelling Bee. So Wardle and his girlfriend decided to finish developing the Wordle prototype that they had programmed in 2013. Wordle then went viral on Twitter in December 2021. While only around 90 people played the game a day in November, on January 1, 2022 it was more than 300,000 people. In mid-January, more than two million players a day. Shortly thereafter, Wardle sold his game to the New York Times for a seven-figure sum. In the meantime, however, many clones and adaptations of the game have appeared in other languages.

Wordle is a mix between Scrabble and Hangman

You have to guess a word with five letters. You have six attempts to find out this word. A five-letter word must be written on the first line. After confirmation, the letters will then be colored. Incorrect letters are highlighted in gray, letters that occur in the target word but are not in the correct position are highlighted in yellow, and letters in the correct position are highlighted in green. If you guess the word, you can share your “solution” in the form of the colorful tiles via Twitter, for example, and compare it with other players. If you don’t manage unscramble letters and find the target word after six attempts, you have to be patient in order to be able to continue playing. Because there is only one word to guess per day.