‘The ultimate game in your pocket’: Months after the colored boxes first went viral, why Wordle remains popular

As Max Giannantonio sat in his dorm room minutes after midnight April 23, he faced his third guess of the handheld vocabulary game he’s played every day for months, often with friends, roommates or both — Wordle.

“There’s no way you get it in three tries,” his friend told him, after she just finished guessing the day’s word in five tries.

Then Giannantonio put in his guess, watching the screen light up letter-by-letter. “OLIVE” illuminated the screen with all-green boxes.

Wordle is an online word game in which players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word. After each attempt, players are given feedback based on the accuracy of their guess, including indications of correct letters and placements. All of the game’s players are given the same word each day, with the game resetting at 12 a.m.

The rivalrous nature of Wordle was what drew Giannantonio, a sophomore finance major at Quinnipiac University, into the game in the first place. He said friends introduced it to him, and he’s been hooked ever since, especially because of the social essence of the game.

“It's very competitive because obviously, it's very random what the word will be, but it makes you feel really good when you've guessed the words in a less amount of guesses than your family and friends,” Giannantonio said. “(It’s) just a fun feeling.”

The game was created in October 2021 by Josh Wardle, a Welsh software engineer based out of Brooklyn, New York. Wardle said in an interview with The New York Times, which bought the game in January, that he created Wordle for him and his partner. He said he was inspired by similar games, such as NYT’s Spelling Bee and daily crossword puzzle.

Wordle, which Wardle dubbed based on his surname, had 90 active users last November. By Jan. 2, that number was up to 300,000. A week later, more than 2 million people were playing, according to Statista. Although the number of active users as of May is unknown, thousands of people continue to share their daily results online.

"I think people kind of appreciate that there's this thing online that's just fun," Wardle told NYT. "It's not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It's just a game that's fun."

Karin Haberlin, a behavioral health researcher and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Connecticut whose research has focused on the addictiveness of mobile gaming, echoed the importance of promoting user enjoyment.

“I think that portability and the elements that are built in—whether it is the challenge presented by finding a word, or the stimulation presented by matching gems, for example—I think that's irresistible to people,” Haberlin said. “People want to play, and if they can play in a bite-sized way, I think that's incredibly appealing.”

As for why millions of people continue coming back to the game everyday, Haberlin said it’s a combination of recreation, communication and competitiveness.

“Some people play these games because they need the dopamine,” Haberlin said. “People are attracted to these games, especially the ones with lots of colors and sounds and motion, because they are seeking dopamine and they really just want to get a little jazzed up to do the things that they don't want to do.”

Dopamine is the brain chemical that helps us feel pleasure, according to Harvard Medical School. A March 2022 Deloitte report on digital media habits confirmed Haberlin’s position: 78% of the United States-based gamers surveyed said that playing video games helps them relax, while 59% reported that gaming helped them through a difficult time.

One of the main reasons Wordle erupted online was due to its sharing feature, which allows users to export a grid of colored squares showing their results without spoiling the day’s word.

Sydney Reynolds, a graduate journalism student at Quinnipiac University, first found out about the game in January when she saw people sharing their scores on Twitter.

“I was like, ‘What are all these boxes being tweeted? I have to figure it out,’” Reynolds said.

Now, Reynolds plays Wordle every day, making sure her results end up available for both her Twitter followers and her competitive family members.

“Me and my family have a Wordle group chat where we all send each other's Wordle, like our boxes,” Reynolds said. “We actively get annoyed if people spoil it.”

Reynolds said she enjoys the competitive nature of sharing her results as well as the fact that each person’s score stands alone without revealing the game for anyone else.

“It is a collective thing, and you can tweet it in a way that can't be spoiled,” Reynolds said. “Some days if I forget about it—which I usually don't—but then (my family will) text (their results and) I'll be like, ‘Oh my god, I have to do the Wordle.’ So (it’s) community and also just clever.”

Unlike Reynolds, Giannantonio prefers playing Wordle while he is physically with others he can speak about the game with.

“Sometimes it takes a while to figure out the word, so then if someone figures it out before someone else, they try and either help them out or just watch them play,” Giannantonio said. “It's funny seeing people struggle to figure out the word when you already know it. It's what I like about it.”

Though Giannantonio is an active player of traditional console-based game systems such as Xbox, he emphasized the accessibility of mobile games like Wordle.

“You don't even need to be on the app to even start thinking of words that it could be,” Giannantonio said. “So I think it's just very convenient having it right on your phone and being able to do it anywhere, anytime.”

Haberlin said she doesn’t see Wordle going away anytime soon because of the mobility of the game.

“I think that mobile games are the ultimate game in your pocket,” Haberlin said. “If you have a phone, a smartphone, or if you have a tablet, you can access it almost anywhere as long as you have access to the internet.”