"If you’ve been on the internet lately, you’ve probably heard of Wordle, a daily online word game that took the internet by storm in December and has recently been purchased by the New York Times."--Callie Frederick, 7th grade
If you’ve been on the internet lately, you’ve probably heard of Wordle, a daily online word game that took the internet by storm in December and has recently been purchased by the New York Times.
This simple game has suddenly gained a massive following of dedicated players - hundreds of thousands, in fact. Wordle started as software developer Josh Wardle’s gift to his partner, who loves word games. Wardle later introduced the game to other family members, who quickly fell in love with it. After Wordle’s success amongst Wardle’s relatives, he decided to release it to the public, and it blew up within a few months.
“It’s a fun thing to do every day. I think the thing that makes it special is that there’s just one puzzle a day,” said 8th grade Lit Arts student, Piper Stuip.
The New York Times bought Wordle on January 31, 2022, for “an undisclosed price in the low seven figures”. The Times promised that initially, Wordle would remain free and no changes would be made to its gameplay. Nevertheless, this development sparked a wide variety of controversies among fans of Wordle.
The main fear of most Wordlers was that the NYT would eventually put Wordle behind a paywall, given their statement that Wordle would only remain free “at the time it moves to The New York Times”. Others agreed that Wordle would likely be put behind a paywall, but it wasn’t necessarily a reason to protest, pointing out that $5 a month was a small price to pay for a subscription to New York Times Games if playing Wordle did ultimately require one.
Many Wordle players were also outraged by the glitch on the New York Times Wordle website that changed their Wordle streaks. After being redirected from the original Wordle website to the NYT site, Wordlers reported issues with their streaks. The most common of these was streaks getting reset, but some players also had their streaks get stuck or reset after a certain number of days. The Times stated on February 10 that their games team would be investigating that their Games team would investigate the reset streaks, but some Wordlers are still experiencing these problems.
Jordan Karnes, Chair of OSA’s Literary Arts Sub-pathway, claims to have experienced this problem with their Wordle statistics. “It’s been really annoying, because my streak is stuck at 7 but I’ve definitely won much more than that! The only upside is that I’m forced to just enjoy the game instead of keeping track of my victories.”
After the NYT’s purchase of Wordle, some fans began to believe that words were getting more challenging, claiming that the Times altered the word list that determines the daily words. However, these concerns have been proven unfounded, and, in fact, the only change by the Times that has been made to the word list is the removal of words, states this message on the NYT Games FAQ page: “We are updating the word list over time to remove obscure words to keep the puzzle accessible to more people, as well as insensitive or offensive words”.
This simple game has suddenly gained a massive following of dedicated players - hundreds of thousands, in fact. Wordle started as software developer Josh Wardle’s gift to his partner, who loves word games. Wardle later introduced the game to other family members, who quickly fell in love with it. After Wordle’s success amongst Wardle’s relatives, he decided to release it to the public, and it blew up within a few months.
“It’s a fun thing to do every day. I think the thing that makes it special is that there’s just one puzzle a day,” said 8th grade Lit Arts student, Piper Stuip.
The New York Times bought Wordle on January 31, 2022, for “an undisclosed price in the low seven figures”. The Times promised that initially, Wordle would remain free and no changes would be made to its gameplay. Nevertheless, this development sparked a wide variety of controversies among fans of Wordle.
The main fear of most Wordlers was that the NYT would eventually put Wordle behind a paywall, given their statement that Wordle would only remain free “at the time it moves to The New York Times”. Others agreed that Wordle would likely be put behind a paywall, but it wasn’t necessarily a reason to protest, pointing out that $5 a month was a small price to pay for a subscription to New York Times Games if playing Wordle did ultimately require one.
Many Wordle players were also outraged by the glitch on the New York Times Wordle website that changed their Wordle streaks. After being redirected from the original Wordle website to the NYT site, Wordlers reported issues with their streaks. The most common of these was streaks getting reset, but some players also had their streaks get stuck or reset after a certain number of days. The Times stated on February 10 that their games team would be investigating that their Games team would investigate the reset streaks, but some Wordlers are still experiencing these problems.
Jordan Karnes, Chair of OSA’s Literary Arts Sub-pathway, claims to have experienced this problem with their Wordle statistics. “It’s been really annoying, because my streak is stuck at 7 but I’ve definitely won much more than that! The only upside is that I’m forced to just enjoy the game instead of keeping track of my victories.”
After the NYT’s purchase of Wordle, some fans began to believe that words were getting more challenging, claiming that the Times altered the word list that determines the daily words. However, these concerns have been proven unfounded, and, in fact, the only change by the Times that has been made to the word list is the removal of words, states this message on the NYT Games FAQ page: “We are updating the word list over time to remove obscure words to keep the puzzle accessible to more people, as well as insensitive or offensive words”.
