Credit: Jackie Frere/NYT
The national obsession with Wordle may yield the NYT a few new subscribers. They purchased the viral word game for an undisclosed sum with 7 figures in it. Unlike other word puzzles, Wordle’s secret sauce is that you get bragging rights on social media. And that, it turns out, made all the difference. Twitter Wordle score postings overtook Barack Obama and Katie Perry for most tweeted.
According to the WSJ, 1.8 million players were Wordle-ing in January (up from 90 who played it on Nov 1. Josh Wardle, the software engineer who created Wordle, said he made a prototype in 2013 and dusted it off during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Derivatives are plentiful. There’s Lewdle if you enjoy playing with rude, dirty words, Primel if you like numbers more than words, and Absurdle, which actually steers you towards wrong answers.
I see T-shirts, and of course, Wordle the movie, in your future.
