Impossible to miss them on social networks.
For the past two weeks, mysterious messages made up of black, yellow and green squares have been invading the news feeds.
Behind these intriguing publications hides the phenomenon of this beginning of the year:
Wordle
.
Starting from 80,000 players per day in November, this game rose to 300,000 in early January and is now approaching 3 million.
Nothing, however, destined this project to go viral.
Wordle
was designed in 2021 by computer scientist Josh Wardle to amuse his wife, a fan of
New York Times
word games .
Its mechanics are reminiscent of the game show
Motus
, which aired for nearly 30 years on France 2. The
Wordle
player has six tries to guess a five-letter word.
The game indicates which letters are well placed and which are not.
The Wordle site is deliberately uncluttered Screenshot
Wordle
has nothing in common with today's mobile games. It is even its antithesis. This is not an application: the game is hosted on a personal site of Josh Wardle. It does not display advertisements, does not include paid options, and does not try to hold the player's attention with gauges to fill, diamonds to win and notifications. And there is only one word to guess per day, the same for all players. “
I've done all the wrong things if you're looking for growth. And it's these choices that make the game so popular
, ”says the developer at TechCrunch.
Josh Wardle shared his game with his British family and American friends.
By word of mouth, the website reaches a journalist from the
New York Times
, who mentions it in a newsletter in November.
The machine is racing.
But it's the sharing function on social networks that will really propel the game. The mysterious squares represent the
Wordle
grid completed by the Internet user, but without the words.
He can thus brag about his performance without revealing the solution to the riddle of the day.
This intriguing format has prompted other Internet users to learn about Wordle, and to test the game.
French versions
The phenomenon arrived in France but with a serious handicap:
Wordle
is in English.
To “
provide a solution for those who want to play in French
”, Louan Bengmah, 21, published Monday on his personal site Le Mot.
"
I have
a Twitch channel
where I talk about web development, and I thought it was a good little project to do live with my community
", which helped him for two days.
“
It would not have been so fast without her, the atmosphere was benevolent.
»
The design of Le Mot, live on Louan Bengmah's Twitch channel Screenshot
Louan Bengmah has respected the spirit of
Wordle
by not seeking to monetize
The Word
“
for ethical reasons. I respect the work of others. Josh Wardle had a great idea, his site is simple, and sharing the results on social media with colored emojis is awesome. Everything is really perfect.
The developer has not installed a tracker to measure the number of visitors, but relies on his Twitter account @WordleFR to gauge the popularity of his project posted on Monday. It had 2,100 subscribers on Friday, compared to 1,500 on Thursday.
Jonathan Magano, 30, put the game Sutom online on January 8. “
Wordle is inspired by the game show Lingo, which for us has become Motus. The concept has evolved over time and the rules have become more complex. I decided to take them back
,” he explains. The words to find are longer - from 6 to 9 letters - and the first letter is imposed. “
But I removed the time limit
,” explains the developer.
The color code is similar to that of the TV game.
“
We say that it doesn't make sense for well-placed letters to be in red, but that's how it was in Motus
,” he smiles.
At the request of the players, Jonathan Magano will soon add sound effects similar to that of the TV show.
"I would also like to add
the black ball
, but I don't know how yet."
Sutom uses the same color code as Motus Screenshot
Opportunistic copies removed from the AppStore
Sutom
has been spotted by Twitch personalities and is seeing his popularity grow by the day, with over 30,000 hits on the site as of Wednesday. Again, the game is not monetized. "
I coded this in a few hours for fun and I didn't invent anything
", explains this web developer. “
I know that people would be willing to pay to be able to do a second grid every day. But frustration is part of this game. Above all, I am a librarian. Sutom source code is online, people can grab it.
»
Others had no scruples.
Earlier this week, copies of Wordle flooded app stores, with ads or $30 options to play as many puzzles as you wanted each day.
Apple ended up cracking down and removing these opportunistic clones from the AppStore.
For his part, Josh Wardle has been approached by investors.
But he wants to keep a cool head.
“
I don't want Wordle to become a full-time job
,” he tells TechCrunch.
“
It was just a game for my girlfriend and me.
»
