What Is Wordle? Everything You Need To Know

If you’ve been on social media at all in the past month, you’ve likely seen posts of grey, yellow and green boxes. It’s a simple game, that has absolutely taken over social media since the new year started. But the game is not new, actually.

See more

That was hard

Advertisement

Wordle 219 6/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟩⬛⬛
⬛🟨🟩⬛🟨
🟩🟨🟩🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

— Alexander Maxham (@alexmaxham) January 24, 2022

In this post, we’re going to tell you everything you need to know about Wordle. If you’ve never played Wordle, then we’ll show you how to play it here.

What is Wordle?

Wordle is a pretty simple word game that you can play online by clicking here. Each day, there is a new five-letter word for you to guess. It resets at midnight in your time zone, so you do need to wait til midnight, and not a specific time if you’re in another part of the world. Some might say it’s better than a NYT Crossword puzzle.

How do you play Wordle?

You will get six chances to guess a five-letter word. Each time you guess a word, you’ll get gray, yellow or green boxes. Gray boxes mean the letter is not in the word. Yellow means the letter is in the word, but not in that spot. And green means the letter is in the word at that spot.

As we’ve said, it is a very simple game, but it is also very addicting and can be pretty hard. You’re going to want to start with a good first word, that has a lot of vowels. Since every English word has a vowel, if you have a word with four vowels, one is likely to be in there.

You can play Wordle on any device that has a web browser. That means your computer, your smartphone, tablet, or even your TV.

Who made Wordle?

Software engineer Josh Wardle created the game for his partner, who was a fan of word games, according to the BBC. Wardle also tells the BBC it will never be full of ads. Which is good news for users, as it is a pretty simple UI right now, without any ads at all. This also means that he is not making any money off of his invention, which has taken over the world.

Wardle was also the creator of Place, which was a pretty popular art project/social experiment that took over the internet in 2017. Place was a shared online space that allowed literally anyone to fight over what was drawn there. That resulted in huge, sprawling communities battling over space on this gigantic online canvas.

Wordle was featured in The New York Times back in November 2021. But it didn’t really gain any traction until Wardle added a share feature in mid-December.

See more

Added a share button to Wordle that generates a spoiler-free emoji grid for you. Shoutout to @irihapeta for inventing such a cool way to share your results each day.

👇

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟨⬛🟨🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Wordle 180 3/6

Try it out: https://t.co/pZTmeT1p7E

— Josh Wardle (@powerlanguish) December 16, 2021

Stay away from the Wordle clones

As with any successful app or game, there are plenty of Wordle clones out there. A big reason for this is because Wordle isn’t even an app, or even on Wordle.com. It’s on Wardle’s own website, powerlanguage.co.uk.

Since Wordle blew up with the addition of the social feature in mid-December 2021, many clones have popped up on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Both Apple and Google have worked to remove these clones, but some will still fall through the cracks.

So why should you avoid these? Well, they can be full of malware and viruses. While some might be looking to cash in on a game that Wardle made that has become mega popular, others are looking to install malware and other malicious things on your devices. So it’s a good idea to stay away from these clones.

There’s even a Wordle rip-off that is charging a $30 subscription fee. Remember, Wordle is completely free and there are no ads on the site either. So if you ever pay for Wordle, you’re being taken advantage of.

Wordle Tips & Tricks

So you’re new to Wordle, and want some tips and tricks on how to play the game. Well, you’ve come to the right place. We’re here to help you with the best first words to use, and other tips and tricks.

Best first-word guesses

Guessing a good first word can make it easier to solve your daily Wordle. Here are some good guesses for your first word.

• Adieu
• Audio
• Stare
• Teary
• Maker
• Cheat
• Story
• Aisle
• Roate
• Raise
• Among many others!

With the first word, you want to get as many vowels in that first word as you can. Every English word has at least one vowel. Which includes the letters A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y. So a word like Adieu and Audio are great words, As they have four of the five vowels (not counting Y) included. So if you use Adieu, and get all gray boxes, then you know that O is in the word.

This will help you build on your guess and get a good start so you may not need all six tries. As you can see above, I started with Adieu. Found out that the vowel would be O, and tried Knows, which ended up giving me three letters in the right position. Which is honestly, pure luck. But a good start nonetheless.

Letters could repeat in the same word

Keep in mind, that even if you used a letter once in the word, it may repeat in the word.

It’s pretty unusual, but it can happen. In recent days, we’ve had words like Robot thrown at us. Which obviously has the letter O repeating.

Very rarely is the word a plural form of a word. So something like Wools or Knows is rarely the word. But you can still guess it to try and get other letters correct.

Use English words

You can’t just guess random letters in each guess in Wordle. It has to be an actual word that Wordle has in its dictionary.

A lot of the time, the words for Wordle are actually pretty common words. So start with those. That way you don’t need to spend time thinking of words that are more obscure.

When all else fails, Google “five-letter words that start with ___”

Some will call it cheating, but you can also Google five-letter words that start with KNO to help find the word for Wordle. This can really help you if you get stuck on the word, but you don’t want to lose Wordle today.

In recent days, Wordle has become tougher and forced me to use this method a bit more than usual. But I try not to.

That’s Wordle!

So that’s Wordle. It’s a really simple word game that won’t take up your whole day. Since you can only guess one word per day. And you only have six guesses to get it right. It’s another one of those viral games that may die off in a few months, but it might also stick around for a long time. Like Flappy Bird, there are still people that want to play the game, even though it launched nearly nine years ago right now.

The interesting thing with Wordle is that the creator makes no money from the game. And has promised that he will not add any ads to the game either. But at some point, he’s going to want to make some money to help cover the costs of keeping the game running. Given how many people are playing it everyday, his hosting costs can’t be small at this point.

If you’ve never played Wordle before, and wanted to get in on the action, well now you know how to play.