How to play Wordle

theverge.com:

By this point in the pandemic, we’re all looking for something pleasant to distract us — even momentarily — from all the chaos, which may explain why the simple, no-frills game Wordle has become so popular. It’s a web-based puzzle that requires players to guess a new five-letter word every day, in six tries or less, and everyone gets the same word. You may have seen people sharing the gray, green, and yellow square patterns on Twitter, which show how they performed on that day’s Wordle without giving away the solution (more on that in a sec).

According to a lovely New York Times profile of Wordle creator and software engineer Josh Wardle (get it?), he devised the game as a gift for his partner Palak Shah, who loves word games and crossword puzzles. The pair apparently got into the NYT Spelling Bee and daily crossword games in 2020, and Wardle wanted to create a new game that Shah would like. The perceived scarcity of the game — only one puzzle per day — leaves the player wanting more.

The game is web-based, so there’s no official app to download (although it’s not for lack of trying by a few copycats). You can play using a mobile or desktop browser; just go to www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/. You have until midnight, when the word resets and a new word is there for you to guess. I often start a game, leave the browser tab open, and come back later as I try to figure out the correct word.

Everyone has their own strategy for how they approach that first blank grid of squares. Choosing a word that has a lot of vowels as your first guess is a solid plan; once you rule out the various vowels, it narrows the word choices significantly (and no, I am not telling you my secret starting word). Type in your word and hit “Enter.”