A new gaming craze is taking hold of users across the country called Wordle. It’s a word game that over 2.5 million people play daily, according to the New York Times. 

The object of the game is to guess a five letter word within six guesses. Players don’t get hints, so a good guess can go a long way. 

  Wordle was initially released to the public in October of 2021. Ever since then, up to millions of people have become addicted to the game.

  According to The Guardian, the number of daily players has gone “from 90 daily players in November to 300,000 at the beginning of January, to 2 million last weekend.”

  One of the reasons Wordle has expanded so much is because of the popularity on social media. Social media users see their followers playing the game and want to join the wave. Players can post their results and talk about the word of the day, without giving away the answer. Wordle users try to mimic the game by using green, black, and yellow square emojis to show their results. This allows for a conversation starter amongst players and those who have never played the game.

Senior Lucas Cash plays Wordle each day at school to start his day.

“Once I finish with my warm-up in first period, I take about five minutes to try and guess the Wordle of the day,” Cash said. “It gives me some time to take a break from what we’re learning, but I’m still using my imagination.”

  The game has expanded intensely since the beginning, causing there to be other versions published, including CrossWordle, Custom Wordle, Wordle Unlimited, and Prattle. 

  English teacher Virginia Brown enjoys playing Wordle each day and recently picked up a new crave for Prattle. Prattle is a version of Wordle that includes Shakespearean words and other modern English terms. 

  “I think we need to be able to get mad at the little things,” Brown said. “There is so much going on in the world that we have every right to be mad at, but we don’t want to stay mad at. So we can get mad at Wordle and move on.”

  Wordle allows for people to take a break from the real world and use their imagination in a different way.