Wordle: Everything You Need to Know About the Viral Word Game

By this point you've almost certainly heard of Wordle. But what the hell is a Wordle? 

Spent any time on Twitter recently? Seen all those posts featuring yellow, green and gray boxes? Yep, that's Wordle. 

What is Wordle?

Wordle is a daily word game you can find online here. It's fun, simple and, like a crossword, can only be played once a day. Every 24 hours there's a new word of the day, and it's up to you to figure out what it is. The site itself does a fantastic job of explaining the rules:

Wordle gives players six chances to guess a randomly selected five-letter word. As shown above, if you have the right letter in the right spot, it shows up green. A correct letter in the wrong spot shows up yellow. A letter that isn't in the word in any spot shows up gray. 

You can enter a total of six words, meaning you can enter five burner words from which you can learn hints about the letters and their placements. Then you get one chance to put those hints to use. Or you can try for performance and guess the word of the day in three, two or even one go.

Simple stuff, but also incredibly compelling. 

So it's just a word game? Big deal...

Yeah, it's just a word game. But it's super popular: Over 300,000 people play it daily, according to The New York Times. That popularity may sound perplexing, but there are a few tiny details that have resulted in everyone going absolutely bonkers for it.

There's only one puzzle per day: This creates a certain level of stakes. You only get one shot at the Wordle. If you mess up, you have to wait until tomorrow to get a brand new puzzle. 

Everyone is playing the exact same puzzle: This is crucial, as it makes it easier to ping your buddy and chat about the day's puzzle. "Today's was tough!" "How did you get on?" "Did you get it?" Which takes us to the next point...

It's easy to share your results: Once you've successfully or unsuccessfully done the puzzle for the day, you're invited to share your Wordle journey for the day. If you tweet the image, it looks like this...

⬜