What is a ‘Wordle’? Everything you need to know

The waning days of 2021 introduced us to a new type of tweet: Green, yellow, and gray boxes arranged in a 5-wide grid with up to six rows. The tweets included inexplicable numbers of outliers and funny, non-wordy bits: Words.

You’ve probably already asked Google about this yourself. It’s easy enough to figure out what it is Words is, and from there explain the grids and numbers that people have been tweeting. Maybe you’ve been messing around for over a year.

But you also want to understand whyright? It’s one thing to read that Spider-Man: No Way Home it’s a great love letter to the fandom, but it’s another thing to see the film turn out so wonderfully and deeply fulfilling.

So what about this thing Words what got so many people talking about it in public shared spaces?

You want more Words? Here it is Words answer and hidden hints for December 3.

What is Wordle?

Yes, I just said that this is an easy question to answer. But for the sake of completeness, let’s start with the basics.

Words is an everyday word game created by Josh Wardle, a Brooklyn-based software engineer who has established something of a reputation as an interesting social experiment designer. Every day, the Internet is greeted with a new crossword puzzle that can only be solved — or not! — using a series of clues for the elimination process.

How does Wordle work? How does Wordle work?

It works like this: When you visit the Words website, you are greeted with a 5-wide by 6-long grid of blank, white boxes. Each box can hold one letter, so you guess the answer by typing a five-letter word and pressing ‘Enter’.

There are no clues up front, so any five letter word will do as the first guess. That’s where the game of Words it really starts. When you send a guess, the color of each character’s box changes.

• If it turns green, that letter is in the daily word and put it in the right place.

• If it turns yellow, the letter is in the word but you have misplaced it.

• If the box turns gray, it means that the letter is not in the name at all.

The website offers a simple descriptive image for first time visitors that lays it all out clearly.

Credit: Screenshot by Mashable

How do you start Wordle? Best first names?

We have some ideas to help you choose the best opener. Some of those tips include choosing a word that has at least two different vowels, and a few common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

Why is Wordle so important?

Words has been available since October 2021 as a daily word game that can be played by anyone online for free. It exploded recently, after Wardle announced the addition of a “Share” feature in mid-December that makes it easy to post your daily activities online.

The Tweet may have been deleted

The platform-agnostic feature does not connect to any particular social media platform. Instead, it copies that grid we’ve seen a lot on Twitter to your device’s clipboard, like emojis. You can take that copied text and paste it into a post on your social media feed.

(If you’re technically skilled, I’d recommend pasting the text of your results somewhere neutral, taking a screenshot, and posting that instead. Doing so allows you to add a separate descriptive text for people who can’t read the post directly on the screen. )

That explains why we suddenly started seeing a lot of talk around it Words in the waning weeks of 2021: Wardle makes it easy for people to bring their perfumes to their favorite online water cooler. But there’s still the fundamental question of why people flock to this thing to begin with.

It’s really good – and very easy – if you’ll try it yourself. There is no cost to play Wordle; you just go to the website, make your guess, and that’s it for the day. Then you can decide for yourself if it’s something you want to turn into a daily hobby.

Personally, I think WordsSuccess ‘s lands somewhere in between New York Times word puzzle and Wheel of Fortune. The hidden name changes every day but, like The NYT different words, the same for everyone each day — so it’s an experience every player shares, even if they take different routes to get the same answer. And the puzzle itself is limited to one, five-letter word, which makes it very similar The wheelThe usual “anyone can do this” complaint.

Then add a smart sharing feature that uses random colored box emoji to let people easily and clearly show off their emojis. Words you win. When you post one of those mysterious grids to outsiders on social media, you’re implicitly telling every fan, “Hey, I play this too. We’re in this cool internet thing together. Let’s talk about it.”

Is there a Wordle app for Android or iOS? Is Wordle free?

My first feeling when I read WordsThe presence was blowing up the app store and search. Surely, I thought, this very popular thing on Twitter is tied to an app of some kind.

You may find “Wordle” results in the iOS App Store or Google Play Store search, but don’t mistake it for the real thing. Wordsoriginally conceived by Josh Wardle and graciously brought online in late 2021, it currently only exists as a browser game that lives here. If you play it somewhere else, – at best – it’s a shame trying to use someone else’s success.

And, yes, it’s still free.

Who makes Wordle? Where is Wordle from?

WordsThe sudden explosion at the end of 2021 led to a discussion centered on its creator. Wardle actually came up with the game in 2021 as a personal project for himself and a fellow gamer. It eventually became the basis of their family’s WhatsApp messages, and that’s when Wardle began to suspect that he might have something special enough to be widely released.

A very interesting origin story is detailed in this good The NYT a profile of Wardle and his latest creations. It’s better to read that for more information, but for the basics it’s enough to know that Wordle was conceived by a caring person who wanted to keep her partner happy during the quiet, trying times of the ongoing global pandemic.

Wordle tips and tricks

My first big tip is not to make the same mistake I did: That pop-up window you see the first time you visit the site is a tutorial, not a clue to the puzzle of the day! It’s much clearer on the PC display than it was on the smartphone browser I was using at the time, so that’s probably not a common error. But I did it, and that means you can too.

In the area of ​​very useful tips: It’s not obvious until you’ve played a few times, but you it can be have words that use the same letter in multiple places. So if the word of the day was “APPLE” and your first guess was “PAPER,” the first “P” would get a yellow box for being the correct letter in the wrong place and the second “P” would get a green box for being correctly chosen AND placed.

You can also click on the gear icon at the top Words website to fix a few things. There’s a Dark Theme option for those who prefer something without the stark contrast of a mostly white screen. The “Hard Mode” switch requires all guesses after the first one to follow the revealed hints. (So ​​going back to our previous “APPLE” example, all guesses after “PAPER” would have to use “A,” “E,” and the two letters “P,” one of which is always connected to the third box.) Finally. , there is a “Color Blind Mode” that uses bright colors for those who need or like them.

Some people have already found it indeed in analysis WordsThe inner mechanics and how we play the (English) language. Others have taken a little more of a lesson from Wardle’s DIY vibe early on in the game and have adopted that into their lives.

The Tweet may have been deleted

The Tweet may have been deleted

In fact, there is no “wrong” way to play. The beauty of Words its simplicity. It also won’t let you get away with plugging in an arbitrary list of letters instead of a real word; every guess you make is checked against it Wordspersonal dictionary. If your guess isn’t a real word, the game doesn’t let you push it.

Just download it and see for yourself. Once you catch the bug, it’s hard not to keep coming back for more.

Caitlin Welsh reportedly contributed to this article.

Not the next day? Here is the solution to yesterday’s Word.