This is an accepted version of this page Wordle is a web-based word game created and developed by Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle.

In the game, players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, receiving feedback through colored tiles that indicate correct letters and their placement.

It gained widespread popularity in late 2021 after the introduction of a shareable emoji-based results format, which led to viral discussion on social media.

The game's success spurred the creation of numerous clones, adaptations in other languages, and variations with unique twists, such as Quordle and Heardle.

In January 2022, Wordle was acquired by The New York Times Company for a seven-figure sum and integrated into its games platform the following month.

While the Times initially preserved the game's core mechanics, it later introduced minor modifications, including editorial oversight and word list adjustments.

[6][7] The game includes a "hard mode" option, which requires players to use any revealed green or yellow letters in subsequent guesses.

[9] Additionally, the game offers both a dark theme and a high-contrast mode for colorblind accessibility, replacing the standard green and yellow color scheme with orange and blue.

[22] Inspired by the color-matching mechanics of Mastermind,[23][24] the prototype allowed players to solve puzzles consecutively and used an unfiltered word list.

[44] Due to these concerns, some players downloaded the webpage to preserve offline access, as Wordle operates entirely through client-side JavaScript.

[48] As part of the transition, The Times removed certain words from Wordle's answer list that were deemed insensitive or offensive, including "slave" and "lynch," to make the game "accessible to more people."

"[49] The Times also made real-time changes in response to current events, ensuring Wordle remained separate from the news.

In May 2022, the word "fetus" was removed from the solution list following the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

[55] In November 2022, The New York Times appointed Tracy Bennett as Wordle’s dedicated editor, responsible for selecting the daily word from a curated list.

Slate's Lizzie O’Leary, for instance, argued that Wordle should "stay hard and weird," preferring the game’s original unpredictability.

Seven of the top ten most-searched word definitions that year—cacao, homer, canny, foray, trove, sauté, and tacit—were all Wordle solutions.

More significantly, Wordle’s popularity has driven increased engagement with other New York Times games, with daily player numbers continuing to rise as of March 2023.

Absurdle, created by British programmer qntm, is an adversarial version where the target word changes after each guess while still adhering to previously revealed hints.

These include Semantle, where players guess words based on semantic similarity;[69][70] and Squabble, a Wordle battle royale.

[71] The game’s success also spurred a wave of non-word-based variations, such as Worldle, where players identify a country or territory by its silhouette, with text hints indicating direction and distance from the correct answer;[72] Heardle, a music-identification game acquired by Spotify in July 2022;[73] Nerdle, which involves solving an 8-digit mathematical equation; and Framed, where players identify a movie from a short clip.

[74] A wave of ad-supported Wordle clones also appeared on Apple’s App Store in early January 2022, often using the same name while making minimal changes to the gameplay.

[76] After acquiring Wordle, The New York Times moved to protect its intellectual property by filing a trademark application for the game’s name[77][78] and issuing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices against GitHub repositories hosting clone source code.

[79] In May 2024, The New York Times initiated legal action against Worldle, a location-based guessing game using a similar format, alleging trademark infringement.

[86][87] Charlie Hall of Polygon's criticized the adaptation, describing it as a "cut-and-paste job" that simply replicated the digital game’s mechanics without adding meaningful enhancements for a multiplayer party setting.