Ever wonder what those green and yellow blocks littered all over Twitter are?
That’s Wordle, the new word game that has taken social media by storm. According to the New York Times, American software engineer Josh Wardle created the game for his partner, a big lover of word games.
Why the name?
Interestingly, the game’s name is a wordplay of his surname “Wardle” and “word”.
The game, which initially was between him and his partner, became popular on their family WhatsApp group, and became a worldwide obsession in a matter of months.
What’s the goal?
In the online puzzle game, players are given six chances to strategically guess a five-lettered word of the day. The game only has one new word every day, and players worldwide get the same word.
Players win the game if they manage to guess the word within six tries. If they cannot, they lose. Winners can maintain a winning streak if they guess the words right multiple days in a row.
What is the reward, you may want to know? Well it is nothing, just the opportunity to boast about your word game skills on social media.
How is the game played?
The daily Wordle puzzle begins with the user typing a random five-letter word in their first chance. The game will mark each individual letter as green, yellow, or grey among the five letters.
Green stands for correct letter, correct position
Yellow stands for correct letter, wrong position
Grey stands for the wrong letter
Using the three colours, users must gauge the correct word of the day in the next five chances, using their wits. As you type more words in the following boxes, you must hunt for more yellow and green boxes until you arrive at the right word. However, if you don’t manage to do this in the five subsequent chances, you lose.
Why is the game so popular?
Like many word games and puzzles, Wordle is said to be a good brainstorming session for your brain, and improve memory, cognition, problem-solving skills and creativity.
Also, the world is living through a stressful period, and such word games are a great way to de-stress. Wordle, a mere game on a blank background, is one of the simplest multiplayer games right now, where you can play online against the whole world.
Unlike many sites today, there are no pop-up adverts or flashing banners on the Wordle site, where every click might lead you to unpleasant sites.
IOL