Today is the 1,000th Wordle (Picture: Shutterstock)
Happy birthday Wordle. Kind of. Today marks the 1,000th edition of the brainteaser that has become a sacred morning ritual for many.
Well, the 1,000th edition we can all play – the game was invented by software engineer Josh Wardle for his puzzle-loving partner during the height of lockdown.
However, after sharing it among friends and family, he decided to go public with the highly addictive daily dose of word-based fun.
It quickly spread from the US to the UK and across the world, becoming so popular that the New York Times snapped it up for an undisclosed seven-figure sum in January 2022. Many feared the game would soon be trapped behind the paper’s paywall, but two years on it remains free to play – if not free on controversy.
A number of answers have sparked anger from devotees, while technical hitches and legal arguments have also popped up.
The first major backlash erupted in January 2022, when the answer had a distinctly American flavour – favor. The US spelling left UK players fuming.
The puzzle was bought by the New York Times for a seven-figure sum (Picture: Getty)
A repeat the following month caused a major sense of humour failure with the answer, you guessed it, humor.
However, another US spelling caused even greater outrage in May 2022 when some thought the answer, fetus, was linked to the debate over abortion rights sparked by a leaked Supreme Court memo suggesting Roe v Wade would be overturned a week earlier.
The New York Times swiftly changed the answer in the middle of the day, sparking more anger as some users were presented with a different puzzle that day than others.
A less political, much more fun drama came in the form of an answer that was actually an acronym – albeit not one that everyone may know.
Tips and tricks for a top Wordle score
Start with the same word every time According to the New York Times, this gives you a ‘baseline strategy’ for every game
Make sure it contains lots of vowels Knowing which vowels (if any) are in the letter will give you a head start. Some players use words such as ‘adieu’, ‘audio’ or ‘canoe’.
Pick two very different words on the first two goes Well, unless you nailed it and have two or more green tiles. Otherwise, be bold.
Don’t waste guesses on a plural In almost two years no answer has ever been a plural noun, so even if you know there’s an S in there, it likely won’t serve that purpose. That doesn’t mean answers never end in S – think ‘amiss’, ‘mossy’ and, er, ‘truss’. There was no political meaning there though, it was long before her days as PM.
Remember those pesky double letters Yes! You have a green tile, that’s that. Now what are the other letters? Well, it could be the same again, something easy to forget – and they may not be together, like ‘atoll’ or ‘motto’, think ‘lilac’ and ‘khaki’.
American spellings It’s an American game, so be warned. UK Wordle fans had a major sense of humor failure the first time they came a cropper over this, so do yourself a favor and be ready.
The word, snafu, is actually an acronym for the phrase ‘Situation normal: all f***ed up’, a snippet of military slang.
But worse than a controversial answer is no answer at all, as happened in late January this year when, for three days on the trot, the game crashed for users across the globe, many claiming it had ‘ruined’ their morning.
And more recently, the game hit the headlines after the New York Times issued a legal threat against the team behind ‘Shetlandic’ dialect version Wirdle, designed to help boost interest in the language.
That doesn’t seem cool – but then neither is cheating, and it turns out, a lot of people are doing that too.
Last September James Dilger, professor emeritus at Stony Brook University, crunched the numbers on those who got the answer right first time – which is entirely down to luck, not skill – and revealed around 6,000 people cheat every day.
Now that’s a five-letter word that isn’t cool.
How to play Wordle
Visit nytimes.com/games/wordle
Here you’ll see a five by six square grid
You have six chances to guess the five-letter word
Enter your starter word
Any correct letters in the wrong place will turn yellow. Correct answers in the right place will turn green. Letters that remain grey are not in the answer
Keep guessing until you figure it out!