Wordle: 5 things to know about this viral word game

In the beginning of 2022, a five-letter word with images of green and yellow squares caught the world’s attention. Yes, we’re talking about Wordle here. It is an online game where the player needs to guess one word in six attempts. If guessed correctly, the right letter turns green, if not, it turns yellow. At powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle, one can play the game for free. On Apple and Google's app marketplaces, one needs to be wary of paid knockoffs. The original Wordle is only accessible through a web browser at this time. Here are 5 interesting Wordle facts that you should know about. 

Twitter has mentioned Wordle for a record number of times 
As of January 14, 2022, 'Wordle' has been mentioned 8,40,000 times on Twitter. This makes Wordle the first viral trend of the year 2022 since it was first released in October 2021. There has been a 48% daily average growth about Wordle in India alone.

Wordle was originally created for personal consumption 
Wordle has been created by Josh Wardle, a programmer and has been popular since it went public in October last year. He had created this word game for himself and his partner, Palak Sharma. According to media reports, they played the game for months and it quickly became a family favourite. Once he introduced it to his family's WhatsApp group, it quickly became an obsession. Wardle then chose to share his concept with the rest of the globe. 

Wordle sticks to US English 
Wordle uses US-English spellings rather than UK-English, (Color, not colour for example). According to media reports, this outraged many UK-based Wordle gamers when the word to guess one day was FAVOR. Favor, a five-letter word or even color, being a five-letter word, was acceptable as opposed to Favour or Colour as used in British English. British users declared the game to be unfair as it placed users of American players at a vantage point over the users of British spellings.  

Wordle has quite a few clones 
Wordle remains a free-to-play game that may be played in any browser. Despite John Wardle's announcement that he has no plans to monetise the game in any manner, a number of developers have openly copied the game's main aspects into their own apps and games. For instance, Zach Shakked, a developer, not only produced a clone of the game called "Wordle – The App," but also monetised it by charging $30 a year to allow players to solve an unlimited number of puzzles per day, rather than just one, like the original version. However, Twitter users condemned his move and he was eventually forced to take down the app as well as issue a public apology. 

Wordle contributes to the greater good too! 
Unlike the many Wordle clones that have been panned, "Wordle!" is a wholly separate word-based game that can still be found on the App Store. This is due to the fact that this game, which differs in mechanics from the viral one created by Josh Wardle, was available in the market before Wordle became a thing. 

The original game creator, Steven Cravotta, has apparently teamed up with Josh Wardle, the creator of the newer, browser-based game, to give all proceeds from his 'Wordle!' app to charity. The app's earnings will be donated to BoostOakland, a California-based charity that works to tutor and mentor young Oakland children.