You’ve probably heard of the new word game “Wordle” because that’s all anyone is talking about these days. Here are the rules of the games and facts about how the game came to be.

“Wordle” was created by Josh Wardle, a play on his last name. Wardle is a software engineer who created “Wordle” for his partner and shared it with relatives before he publicly released it in October of last year.

The rules of the game are simple. You get six tries to guess a five-letter word, with a new word every day. If any of the letters turn yellow then those letters are in the word, just not in the right spot. If the letters turn green then they are in the word and in the right spot. You want to get all the letters green before you run out of guesses.

“Wordle” is a game that can be played quickly in the morning or take some time depending on the difficulty of the word. Players of the game are known to share their scores either online or with family members. 

“I do it every morning when I drink my coffee and then I send it (to) my brother and several friends,” said Liza Buhr, a senior studying communicative disorders. “It’s a cool way to connect after so much disconnect with COVID.”

The New York Times Company announced that they had bought “Wordle” on Jan. 31. It may have come as a surprise to long-time players of the game, but it seemed to be the right choice for Wardle and his partner as they had been long-time fans of the NYT crossword and Spelling Bee games.

Since the acquisition by The New York Times, many players have noticed that the words have gotten increasingly difficult and have expressed their outrage to the company. One of these instances includes when there were three days in a row of the words having double letters, which is unusual for the game.

There are some players who don’t mind the challenge and don’t have a problem with the acquisition. 

“I think it was a great way to get it out to other people because the New York Times is so big and I didn’t hear about it before then,” said Amanda McGovern, a senior communicative disorders major. 

Since the game’s popularity, there have been similar games popping up everywhere including “Wordle Unlimited,” “Sweardle,” which has swear words and even one named “Taylordle,” that is Taylor Swift-themed. 

Timothy Crowley, an English professor, has been playing a Shakespeare version of “Wordle” called “Prattle” that was made by the Folger Shakespeare Library. It has the same concept as the original and focuses on words in Shakespeare’s plays. 

With this game’s popularity and multiple spinoffs, it seems like this trend isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.