What Is a Wordle and Why Is Everyone Tweeting About It?

You can’t go far on Twitter without spotting a black, green and yellow grid paired with the hashtag #wordle. It’s the latest social media trend to go viral, but what exactly is a wordle? 

What is Wordle?

Wordle is, unsurprisingly, a daily word game. The aim of the game is to try and guess a five-letter word in under six tries. Once you get the hang of it, it’s actually a very easy game to play. 

Because you can only play wordle once-a-day, it’s likely to become a long-term-favourite, rather than a viral fad game that dies out in a similar fate to Fortnite and Flappy Bird. 

How do you play Wordle?

You can play Wordle on desktop and mobile browsers, and there’s no need to download an app. Simply head to the Wordle website to check for their newest puzzle, making sure to browse the site every day for the latest one!

You’ll see an empty grid, at first, into which you need to type a word and hit enter. The letters will change to green if they’re in the right place, orange if they’re present in the word but in the wrong position, and grey if they don’t belong in the word at all. 

Based on the colour-changing results the game provides, you can fine-tune your guess in the next row. Remember that if a letter turns green or amber, it may actually appear in the word more than once - so don’t eliminate any letters unless they have turned grey.

Some fans of the game like to start the game off by trying a new word every day, whereas others try the same word which includes a lot of vowels (like “ARISE” or “TEARS”) to base their future guesses on. 

The main goal is not to waste any of your six goes by repeating letters which have already turned grey in your last guesses. Although you only get six guesses a day, you could sneakily launch a second web browser or use incognito mode. 

Why is everyone tweeting about Wordle?

Once you successfully complete a game of Wordle, you can share your result onto Twitter - which is everyone is tweeting about it! You can click on “share” on the game, and Wordle will copy your colourful solution to the clipboard, where you can paste it into a Tweet and share to your heart’s content. You can, of course, share your solution to any social media platform of your choosing.