At the moment it is only in English, but due to its success, its developers would be preparing the Spanish version.
Washington (AFP) .- Five letters, six attempts, a single word to discover every day: Wordle’s formula is simple but, for several weeks, it has caused a furor on social networks in the United States.
“It makes you addicted”, confides to AFP Susan Drubin. “It only takes a few minutes a day, and it’s a very nice distraction,” adds the 65-year-old retiree who lives in Maryland, on the US coast.
According to the New York Times, On November 1, 90 people were trying to find the word of the day. Two months later, on January 2, there were more than 300,000.
The principle is basic: you have to hit a five-letter word in a maximum of five attempts. Each guessed letter in the correct box appears in green, while a guessed letter in an incorrect box appears in yellow.
In case of failure, you have to wait until the next day.
Having started playing a few weeks ago, Drubin joined thousands of players who share their daily results on social media with the hashtag #Wordle and six lines of five colored rectangles that indicate the number of attempts they solved the puzzle.
Whithout ads
The particularity of Wordle lies in part in the fact that it was conceived by a computer engineer named Josh Wardle, not to be sold to the general public but as a simple means of distraction. The British resident in New York decided not to monetize the game.
“People appreciate the existence of this online thing that is just fun,” he told the New York Times. Wordle “does not try to do something strange with your personal data.”
No advertising appears on the site, but some already try to copy the principle, to make money. The original game can only be found at powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle.
For Mikael Jakobsson, research coordinator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) GameLab, Wordle is classified among the games to “pass the time.” Simple mechanics games, for “when you wait for a friend or (…) when you wait for the bus,” he told AFP.
Show off
According to him, the success of the game is partly explained by how easy it is to share, on social media or by word of mouth.
After having solved the riddle “you feel very proud (…), you have that little icon to share here. So he can show off a bit, which we tend to want to do, ”he explains.
Rachel Kowert, a psychologist specializing in video games, abounds in the same sense and evokes the theory of social comparison: everyone wants to evaluate themselves in comparison with others.
The researcher also estimates that the fact of being “limited to only one game per day gives a feeling of psychological rarity”.
“It makes him want to go back and play day after day,” he underlines for AFP.
Another advantage of the game: its accessibility, provided you speak English …
Although in view of the popularity of the game, it was a matter of time before it was adapted to other languages. For now, there are already versions in Spanish, French and Portuguese, at least.
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
