Wordle is a guessing game in which the player has to guess a randomly selected five-letter-word within six tries. But what makes this game so special is that it can only be played once a day and the daily word is the same for everyone around the world. After the daily play, a user can also share their results without giving away the actual answer. 

Note that each row on the grid is one attempt. The grey boxes represent letters, not in the answer, the yellow boxes are letters that are in the answer but not in the right spot, and the green boxes are the correct letters in the right spot. Looks like Jimmy Fallon just made it by the skin of his teeth.

This clever game design challenges people to guess the word in the least attempts, show off their feats on social media, and discuss the daily word with their friends. 

The simplicity of the game also reminds people of the early days of the internet free of ads, scams, and addiction-inducing elements. 

“[Wordle] is what the web was like when we first had it, it was much more playful,” says Adam Procter, who heads the game design course at Southampton University.

All these factors have contributed to Wordle’s wildfire success, with the daily user count jumping from 90 people in November 2021 to 300,000 in the first week of January- topping almost two million at the end of January. 

The best countries and U.S. states, ranked

According to World Tips’ Twitter analysis, this is what the scorecard looks like:

Within the United States:

• North Dakota is at the top of the leaderboard, needing an average of only 3.65 guesses.
• St. Paul, Minnesota is the best city in America – with an average of 3.51 daily guesses.

But when compared to other countries:

• The United States is outranked by 17 other countries, claiming the 18th spot. 
• Despite having a five-time World Scrabble Champion, New Zealand places 23rd.
• The title of the world’s best country at Wordle belongs to Sweden with an average of 3.72
• Denmark and Finland are runner-ups, placing 2nd and 3rd respectively.  

The competition is at an all-time high and people are coming up with creative strategies and even cheating to win. 

WordFinderX, an online word helper for games, saw that the Google searches for the daily Wordle answers have tripled since the end of January hitting 100 on Google’s scale.

(Google Trends rates topics on a scale of 0 to 100 based on a topic’s proportion to all searches on every topic)

Wordle makes it big

This insane global popularity is probably also why the New York Times acquired the game from creator Josh Wardle for an amount “in the low seven figures.”

Wardle, who made the game for him and his partner says the “game has gotten bigger than I ever imagined.”

In fact, the game has been such a hit that it already has spin-offs like Heardle and Worldle, which have the same concept except for music and countries. 

If you’d like to have your go at the viral word game, click here.