How to play Wordle: How to win the internet's latest game obsession
NEW YORK - What is Wordle? It is the free game that is taking off across the internet. It is a daily game where the user gets six guesses to come up with the five-letter secret word of the day in as few turns as possible.
The user starts with a guess word and then there are three outcomes for each letter. If the letter is in the word and in the correct spot the square around it turns green. If the letter is in the word but in the wrong spot the square turns yellow. If the letter is not in the word the square will turn gray.
The user tries again up to five more times to come up with the word.
The game was designed by a software engineer in Brooklyn named Josh Wardle. He reportedly created the guessing game for his partner, who enjoys word games. He previously created Place and The Button for Reddit.
After his family and friends started to really enjoy it, he decided to release it to the rest of the world and it has started to take off.
There is one new game a day and there is no app for it. You have to go to the Wordle website to play.
People are posting the patterns of their guesses on their social media squares, which has created more interest in the game. Wardle added the share button to Wordle that generated the spoiler-free emoji grid in December.
The word game Wordle is shown on a mobile phone . The online word game was created by Brooklyn software engineer Josh Wardle. (Photo Illustration by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
How to win Wordle?
There are various strategies that people use to play Wordle. Two of the most common are to start with a word with a lot of vowels or start a word with a lot of commonly used consonants.
Some people will start every puzzle with the same word, a.k.a the Wordle starter word. One popular word people reportedly use to start Wordle is arise because it has three vowels and two consonants that might be good to confirm or rule out quickly.
One thing to remember is that the same letter can appear in the Wordle word of the day twice. For example, the word could be press.
As for winning, the only trophy is knowing how well you did and being able to share the results with your social media followers.
RELATED: Wordle starter words for the win
What five-letter word can you put in the Wordle matrix as your first guess that will increase your odds of success by eliminating and/or confirming what letters are in the word of the day? This has a bunch (is that one?) of candidates.