Wordle is a daily word game that was coded during the pandemic and released last October by software engineer, Josh Wardle, as a gift for his wife. Wordle has made a serious splash in mainstream media.

Wordle gives players six chances to guess a randomly selected five-letter word. The letters will show up with different colors depending on if you have the right letter and if the letter is in the right spot. If the letters you entered show up green, it is both in the right space and a correct letter, if it shows up yellow it is a correct letter but in the wrong spot, and if a letter isn’t in the word at all it will show up gray. A collective score of the colors tiles you got in the game can be shared with friends and family after completion.

The game was recently bought by the New York times for a figure in the low millions and has accumulated thousands of players (300,000 thousand to be exact). Wordle was built without a team of engineers, it was just Wardle and his partner, Palak Shah, killing time during a pandemic.

Wardle takes comfort in the knowledge that his game has brought joy to people at a difficult time. “I get emails from people who say things like ‘hey, we can’t see our parents due to COVID at the moment but we share our Wordle results each day’. During this weird situation, it’s a way for people to connect in a low effort, low friction way.”