Am I the only person still passionate about Wordle?

Competing with his daughter’s highly questionable methods, Will Gore aims to restore his ‘perfect’ record on the daily puzzle game

Last year the simple yet fiendish game gripped the entire nation, whereas now it’s possible it may only grip the Gores (PA Wire)

If I asked what you were doing 18 months ago, you might initially find it hard to remember. But if I said to you “Wordle”, you’d almost certainly recall that a year and a half ago you were either stressing over that day’s fiendish puzzle, desperately waiting for the next one to drop, or perhaps trying to avoid the gazillions of people posting their daily scores on WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and the village notice board.

The story of Wordle’s meteoric rise is well-known. Created by Josh Wardle, a Welsh software engineer, it was launched publicly in October 2021, the aim being to guess the five-letter word of the day in six guesses or fewer. By the first week in January 2022, it was being played by 300,000 people a day; a fortnight later, it had over 2 million daily plays; and at the end of the month, the game was acquired by The New York Times in a multimillion-dollar deal.

I was hooked pretty early, as were most of my family. Such was my enthusiasm, that one Wordle a day was not enough. I played Dordle (one set of guesses, two words), Quordle (four words) and Octordle (eight words) on my lunch break. After work, I’d play Worldle (six chances to figure out a country outline) with my daughter. She also played Waffle (a multi-word grid), and told me in embarrassed tones about Sweardle – like Wordle but for the potty-mouthed.