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I noticed it on Twitter around Christmas.
Green, yellow and white (sometimes black) dots appearing in my timeline with fractions such as 3/6, 4/6 and 5/6 and the single word "Wordle"
I ignored it until post-festive boredom got the better of me. I googled Wordle.
It was a word game invented in October 2021 by Josh Wardle, an American geek who in 2015 created "the button" on Reddit as a social experiment.
Wardle's new game punned his name and the idea was similar and simple: find the right five letter word in six goes or under.
Green dots meant the right letter in the right place, the yellow dots meant the right letter in the wrong place, the white dot (or black) meant the letter was not in the word. If the greens bothered, there was a colour-blind mode.
It was free to play and there was a new word each day.
With beginners luck I got my first word in three goes. I remembered the following day and got it in three goes. Though my average has since gone down, I was hooked.
I told my partner. Annoyingly she wins at Scrabble (I blame a disturbing knowledge of two-letter words) and knew she'd like Wordle. We compared results. She was hooked.
Before long the rest of the world was hooked too.
From 90 players at the start of November, it shot up to 300,000 in two months especially after Wardle allowed people to share the results.
Some say the appeal of Wordle is that it is not difficult. Wardle puts it down to social media sharing and the scarcity aspect with just one puzzle a day.
Whatever it was, it was hot property.
Wardle bowed to the inevitable and sold it to the New York Times last month for "an undisclosed price in the low-seven figures."
Wordle moved to the Times website and remains free. Some worry it has got harder.
Not so hard is Wordle's source code, which has spawned many imitators.
There's Dordle "the two at once" Wordle, where people guess two words using the same five letters in seven goes.
That spawned Quordle "the four at once" Wordle, each five letters but nine goes to get them.
Then there's the Devil-spawned Sweardle - the NSFW (not safe for work) version in blasphemous four letters.
As a geography nerd, I prefer Worldle with six goes to name a country or region from its shape.
I loved the Gaelic language language Wordle with only 13 consonants until I saw its 10 scary vowels. I plumbed the depths of schoolboy Irish to get it in four (OIFIG - office).
I also like the bizarre Absurdle - Wordle, but not as we know it, Jim.
I failed to explain Absurdle to my partner and doubt I'll do it justice now but here goes:
Like "hangman", Absurdle gives the impression of picking a single secret word, but instead it considers the list of all possible secret words which conform to your guesses. Each time you guess, Absurdle prunes its internal list as little as possible, to prolong the game as much as possible. Absurdle gives an infinite number of tries, but typically you'll end up with a word like "fuzzy" in about seven or eight goes.
Fuzzy as mud? Check the official explanation.
As some wag said we don't know yet the effect of "long Wordle" but Douglas Gentile, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, told American CNBC it fulfils the "ABC of human needs."
"A is autonomy. We want to feel in control of our lives, B is belongingness. We want to feel connected to other people," Gentile said. "C is competence. We like feeling [we're] good at something."
I'd say amen to that but amen only has four letters. "Truly" is much better.
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