In news which almost certainly has every other newspaper in the English-speaking world kicking itself for not getting there first, the New York Times has spent upwards of £1 million to acquire the cosy, daily online word game Wordle, which was originally created, adorably, by software engineer Josh Wardle to entertain his partner, who loves puzzles.
In case you’re not one of the faithful, it works like this: every day you get six tries to work out a new five-letter word. Your first word is a guess (there is some debate as to whether it’s worth just being random here or “tactical” with lots of vowels) and then each letter changes colour to indicate whether it a) does not appear in the correct answer, b) does appear but in a different location, or c) appears where you have it. Then you try again.
I mostly get it in four, never less than three, in case you’re remotely interested. The genius of Wordle — of course — is that you can’t waste hours playing it. It’s one game a day (based, in fact, on the NYT’s own Spelling Bee game), which gives you a little zingy shot of smugness, but leaves you wanting more.
The move is apparently a bid to drive digital subscriptions, and since it’s estimated that millions of people now play Wordle every day, with some sharing their word scores on Twitter every damn morning, it’s a canny one.
People are obsessed with puzzles, truly evangelical — earlier in my career I worked on a national newspaper famous for its crossword, and was dumbstruck by the avalanche of postbags that appeared when it was moved within the paper by a distance of approximately three pages. The rage! You think being a woman on the internet is bad, try being the puzzles editor of The Times.
I already get the NYT, but was considering ditching my subscription to help pay to heat my flat. Now obviously I won’t do that just in case they make it more difficult to access Wordle.
So if you need me, you’ll find me on my sofa in three jumpers and a bobble hat, racking my brain for a word that has a P, a U and a C but is apparently, inexplicably, not “pluck”. Help!
