A new game called Wordle captivates Edina High School students. It’s not hard to spot students working on the daily puzzle or chatting about their results. On TikTok, countless videos have been posted discussing the best strategies to use and expressing love for the game. 

Wordle is an online puzzle game where the player has six tries to guess a five-letter word. It is formatted as a five-by-six grid. The player must enter a real five-letter word, and the letters light up green if the letter is in the correct place, yellow if the letter is in the word but in the wrong place, and gray if the letter isn’t in the word at all. Using this information, the player can narrow down which letters are in the word and do their best to find the correct word before their six tries are up. 

Since its creation in October, Wordle has experienced a meteoric rise, accumulating millions of fans who play the game daily. 

“Many of my friends play Wordle as well as members of my family,” junior Hope Berge said. However, Berge doesn’t play the game, citing their frustration at the non-stop influx of Wordle-related content. “I got annoyed seeing it everywhere when I wanted to see [other] content about things I am interested in instead,” they said. 

The game is only playable once a day, with the answer word resetting at midnight. 

“I like the once-a-day aspect,” social studies teacher Erik Anderson said. “I think it’s genius on the part of the creator. It builds anticipation.” Sophomore Bjorn Snyder agrees with Anderson. “My favorite thing about Wordle is that it only happens once a day and everyone has the same word, so it’s sort of like a competition,” he said. 

One of the most popular debates around the game is which word to use first. Some stick to a statistically best choice to test out popular letters, such as “ADIEU” or “IRATE.” Others prefer to switch the first word each day.

 “For a while, I was starting with ‘ADIEU’, but then I’ve tried using a random word just to mix things up,” said Anderson.

The hit game was recently purchased by the New York Times, which assured the game would “initially remain free to new and existing players.” It joins other games in the NYT catalog such as the Mini Crossword, Spelling Bee, and Vertex.

Wordle has spawned a number of variations like Absurdle and Lewdle, perfect for players who want more than the daily puzzle. All the variations have similar rules and layout, but some are more difficult, like Absurdle, and others focus on a specific category of word, like Lewdle.  With millions of fans and dozens of spin-off games, it’s clear Wordle has captivated the world.