What is Wordle? How to play the viral web game

If you’ve been on Twitter or in a group chat lately, you may have seem someone post their Wordle results. Towards the end of 2021, the daily word guessing game gained steam, turning into a viral sensation.

But if you haven’t joined in, here’s what to know about the game and how to join in on the fun.

What is Wordle?

Wordle is a web browser game created by US-based software engineer Josh Wardle.

It’s a daily word guessing game that gives users six tries to figure out what the daily word five-letter is. With each guess, you are helped with hints that tell you if your chosen letters appear in the word.

Grey means a letter doesn’t appear in a word, orange/yellow means it appears in that word but in another position, and green means that the letter appears in the daily word in that position.

Once your six guesses are up, Wordle lets you share your score with others. This is the series of coloured blocks you see everyone sharing in chats or on social media — they represent each guess and whether letters were placed correctly.

Of course, the results don’t include the letters themselves. Since everybody gets the same daily word, the results are only colour-coded blocks.

This gives you bragging rights without spoiling the word of the day for everyone else.

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

How to play

To play Wordle, all you need to do is visit the official Wordle website. There are apps and other websites that offer similar games, but this is the original.

The website will show you the instructions for the game, including the fact that each guess must be a valid five-letter word. So don’t bother putting in random letters to get hints.

To get started, click on the first box and start typing a word. When you’re ready to submit your guess, press Enter.

The game will then highlight which letters, if any, appear in the daily word.

You will have six tries in total. In the hard mode of the game, you will have to use any hints revealed (green or orange tiles) in your next guess.

Once you have finished all six guesses, or successfully guessed the word in fewer attempts, the game will give you your results.

Click the Share button to copy your results to your clipboard. You can then paste this on social media or in a text message.

You don’t have to save your results or log in to keep track of your stats over time. The game appears to use a tracking cookie to do this.

However, if you use a different browser, or clear your browser cookies, you may eventually lose the cumulative total of games played and guess distribution.

If you navigate away from the page, your progress is saved. However, each day the page resets with a new word.

Is Wordle free?

Wordle is completely free to play, with no downloads or login required.

There are also a variety of apps and alternatives available that seek to replicate the formula created by Josh Wardle, which may include ads or purchases. But the original game is free and the page, at the time of writing, contains no adverts.

So go ahead to the site and join in on the fun if you want to try it out.

Read more: Indie games to look out for in 2022