What is the worst app to use before bed?
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New York (CNN) --
Wondering what all those green and yellow mosaics are about on your social media?
This is Wordle, a new word game that has stolen the attention of the Internet.
Think of Wordle as a kind of Mastermind, but with words instead of colored tiles.
Or a mini crossword, no clues.
To start the game you simply choose a five letter word and write it on the grid.
If you make a mistake, the letter will be grayed out.
Correct letters are colored yellow, and if the letter is also found in the correct place, the box turns green.
Players have six chances, no more, to guess the word, and the fewer chances they use, the better.
Something similar to golf.
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At a time when the news cycle is so chaotic and polarized, a simple pun might be just what the internet needs.
The intriguing story of Wordle
Even the story behind the game is somewhat intriguing.
The New York Times reported that the game was created by software engineer Josh Wardle for his partner, who loves puns.
Wardle -- yes, even the name of the game is a play on words -- eventually brought his project to the public in October, after proving its popularity in a family group chat.
It has since grown from 90 to 300,000 players since Sunday.
"This is something that motivates you to invest three minutes a day," he said in an interview with the newspaper.
"He doesn't want to take more of your time than that."
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Deepak Venkatasubramanian from Charlotte, North Carolina, reviews Wordle like it's the morning paper.
It's refreshing for him to have a routine during the pandemic and in a society oversaturated with information, he said.
He used to play something similar with his family when he was little on road trips, and now he plays Wordle in a group chat with his friends to keep in touch.
His group of recent graduates even created an Excel table to keep track of the winners.
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"We have a culture of being able to access everything at the same time," Venkatasubramanian said.
"It's like waiting for an episode of your favorite TV show to come out."
The game, a simple combination of logic and luck, is going viral on social media and chat after Wardle implemented an easy way to share results by allowing users to copy and paste the colored squares without displaying the word.
Thousands of people post their scores each day on Twitter, revealing how many tries it took them to solve the puzzle, and in what order they did it.
For many, it is now part of their daily routine.
Wardle posts a new game every 24 hours on a website of his creation.
There are no more complications.
There are also no ads or pop-ups and no need to create an account or pay to use it.
"I don't understand why a thing can't just be for fun. I don't need to charge people for this and ideally I'd like it to stay that way," Wardle said in an interview with BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday.
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