The word game the world plays
26th April, 2023
Here in the Watch and Learn office we eat, sleep and breathe language as a team.
But every day, just for five minutes one word threatens our peaceful community... It’s a simple word of only five letters that we have six attempts to find.
Do you know it? It’s called Wordle.
Every day a new champion is crowned - the new word wizard ! Read on for our guide to the game and tips on how to play.
What is Wordle?
The New York times describes Wordle as a love story because it was created by a software engineer for his girlfriend.
Josh Wardle came up with the game because his partner liked playing word games. His friends and family loved it too so he made it public.
In the first week it got 5,000 players! In two months over 300,000 people were playing and the number kept growing and growing.
So how do I play?
It’s quick and easy. All you need to do is find a five-letter word. Now there are over 12,000 five-letter words in English but the makers of Wordle went through and chose around 2,500 that they think are commonly known by most English speakers. The board looks like this:
Now choose your first five-letter word. The grid will show up in grey any letters that aren’t in the word. If there is a letter in your word that is right but in the wrong place, it will be yellow. Any correct letters in the right place will be green. It’s easier to understand when you see a picture.
The first word that you choose is important. Many people choose a word with lots of vowels. My personal favourite is ‘adieu’. Bill Gates has said that he likes to start with ‘audio’ or ‘ounce’.
Why should I play?
Wordle is quick and fun. It takes about 5 minutes to have a game and will get you thinking in English. It’s a win-win. There are some cool ways you can expand your learning too. You could:
Record words
Record the words you learn with their word part (noun,verb,adjective etc) and make a sentence using them that’s true for you e.g. I tried the game wordle today. It’s a popular craze (noun) right now
Build word knowledge
Expand your understanding of the daily word. Find the synonym or antonym of that word or it’s most common collocations. e.g. A synonym of craze is fad. An antonym of craze.
Get creative
Write a quick story using all the words you got wrong on the way to finding the answer! If I use the graphic above I might say. The holy grail of track competitions is racing with cramps while holding a crab. It’s crazy but it’s the latest craze!
So what are you waiting for? Give it a go and tell us what you think! Fun games like Wordle are a brilliant way to get a little English practice in every day.
Read more about how the game was developed here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/technology/wordle-word-game-creator.html
Glossary
Here's a little vocabulary guide to help with some of the words in this article.