Wordle recently celebrated its fifth anniversary, and the five-letter puzzle remains part of the daily routine for millions of players. WEMU’s John Stockwell spoke with the game’s Ann Arbor-based editor, some devoted players in the WEMU newsroom and a writer who helps people solve it with a daily hint column. He takes a look at why Wordle is still going strong.
For a lot of people, the day does not really get started until they have opened a small grid of gray, yellow and green squares.
Wordle has become a daily ritual — part puzzle, part competition and, for some players, a streak they guard very carefully.
And unlike so many online games, Wordle asks for only a few minutes of your time. There is one puzzle each day, one answer and then you wait until tomorrow to do it all over again.
But the game’s simplicity hides a surprisingly thoughtful process.
Someone has to decide which five-letter word millions of people will try to solve each day.
So, I wanted to know how those choices are made — what makes a good Wordle word and more.
I started with the person who knows that process better than almost anyone: Wordle editor and Ann Arbor resident Tracy Bennett. She told me the rules.
TRACY BENNETT: "In Wordle, you want to find a five-letter word. There's only one word every day to find. You get six guesses. And every time you make a guess, you get a set of hints in the result. So the answer will show you where the correct letters are in your word that you're shooting for. Those will be green. If their letter is in the word, but it's in a different spot in the word, it'll be yellow. And if the letter comes out gray, then it's not in the word. And you, by deduction and strategy, eventually, in six guesses, hope to get the word."
The New York Times bought Wordle in 2022, and when Bennett took over as editor, she inherited creator Josh Wardle’s original list of possible answers — a list she has continued to shape and expand.
That means every word has to work not only as a puzzle, but as something millions of people with different vocabularies and different playing styles can reasonably solve, which made me curious: How exactly does someone become the editor of Wordle?
BENNETT: "Well, I started out as a crossword puzzle person, so crossword puzzles were my hobby and have been since I was a teenager. But about 15 years ago, I started making crossword puzzles and I got increasingly involved in doing that as a side gig, including editing some puzzles. And finally, I applied for a job that came available at the New York Times. And so I was hired as a crossword puzzle editor. And then, a year later, they acquired Wordle, and they needed someone to be the editor, basically the curator or, in radio terms, the DJ for Wordle."
Of course, editing Wordle is not just about finding any five-letter word.
The challenge is finding one that is familiar enough to be fair, but interesting enough to make players think.
Too easy, and the puzzle may be forgettable. Too obscure, and players may feel cheated.
And there are only so many five-letter words that hit that sweet spot.
So I asked Tracy a deceptively simple question: What makes a good Wordle word?
BENNETT: "Well, it has to be a familiar word, one that people would either encounter in a book or in speech. It can be slangy, but it has to be popular. It can be something like 'intro' or 'condo.' It can be a shortened word or 'radar,' which used to be an acronym. Things like that are acceptable, but they do have to be words that people recognize for the most part."
With millions of people playing Wordle, Bennett has become something of a celebrity in the puzzle world — even if most players would not recognize her walking down the street.
But once someone learns that she is the person choosing the word they may have spent 10 minutes — or half an hour — trying to solve that morning, the reaction can be pretty immediate.
I wondered what happens when Wordle fans find out exactly who she is.
BENNETT: "Mostly, it's excitement and wanting maybe to take a selfie together, which I love doing. And I love meeting people, so I usually ask them about their lives and what's going on with them. Occasionally, someone walks up to me – it's very kind – but says they were really mad about a word that broke their streak, or like they didn't think was a real word. So I get – sometimes I get that out in the wild."
Around the WEMU newsroom, it has become part of the daily rhythm too.
There is the occasional bragging, a little friendly comparison of scores — and, of course, plenty of personal strategy.
Everybody seems to have a theory: the best starting word, the letters you want to eliminate first or whether using the same opening word every day is genius or stubbornness.
WEMU reporter Ana Longoria has her own approach to narrowing down the possibilities.
So, I asked her how she plays the game.
STOCKWELL: "Is there a good word to start with or something like that?"
ANA LONGORIA: "Like, they suggest things with like common consonants, common vowels. A lot of people like to go with 'arise,' 'adieu,' 'slate,' but I personally like the word 'yeast.' 'Cause 'yeast' has 'e,' 'a,' which are very common vowels, 'st,' which are also very common consonants, and then I get a lot of words that end with 'y,' because 'y' is sometimes a vowel, as you may have heard."
Just across the cubicle wall from Ana is WEMU’s Josh Nieman — another devoted Wordle player.
Josh loves the game. Winning it, however, can sometimes be another matter.
He has developed his own approach over time, though he is the first to admit that the results are not always pretty.
JOSH NIEMAN: "So it's just a very humbling experience 'cause I'm really bad. When a word gets eliminated, it's just gray, right? And so, to type in my first word and just get a full row of gray, you know how some people like try to go to something to like get like an up for the week? I go to Wordle to get like a down for the week.
STOCKWELL: "Why, yeah, why do you keep going back? "
NIEMAN: '"Cause one day I feel like I'll get it and each time I'm like, 'This is the time,' and then it just doesn't happen."
STOCKWELL: "Like Charlie Brown kicking the football?"
NIEMAN: "Like Charlie Brown kicking the football. Exactly like Charlie Brown kicking the football, yeah.
STOCKWELL: "Did you ever get it right?"
NIEMAN: "Oh, there was one time I think the word was 'ghoul.' I think the word was 'ghoul,' and I got it in two tries, yeah."
For players who need a little help without having the answer spoiled outright, there is a whole ecosystem of Wordle hints online.
Gael Cooper writes a daily Wordle hint column for CNET, offering players a nudge in the right direction when those five letters just are not cooperating.
It is a delicate balance. Give too little help and the hint is not useful. Give too much and you have taken away the satisfaction of solving the puzzle yourself.
I asked her about her column and what goes into giving people useful help — without giving too much away.
GAEL COOPER: "I would call it a hints article. Every day on CNET, we publish the hints and the answers for Wordle, as well as some other New York Times games. So every day we have a page for each of those games. It has a little hint so that if you don't want spoilers right away, you just want some assistance in solving, you won't get spoiled right away. But then at the end of the puzzle, we do say the answer in case you're just stuck and you don't want your streak to break."
STOCKWELL: "Now, how do you come up with good hints, like, so you're not really giving it away, but you want it to be challenging? What's the key there?"
COOPER: "For me, it's just to kind of play it myself and say, 'Oh, that would have helped me to know that, you know, one of the letters is really unusual,' or that there's some repeated letters that you might not remember that, 'Oh, I already picked this letter, but I can put it in a different place.' You know, just things like that, and then sometimes we give a little hint to the meaning of the word if you're just stuck."
Wordle has been around for several years now — an eternity, perhaps, in the world of online games and viral trends.
Plenty of internet crazes explode overnight and disappear almost as quickly.
Wordle has been different.
Every morning, millions of people still come back to those same five letters and six chances.
There is no complicated app to master, no endless series of levels and no big-time commitment. Just one small puzzle that everyone gets to solve together.
So I asked Tracy Bennett why she thinks Wordle has managed to stick around.
BENNETT: "Well, there are a couple of reasons. First of all, it was a very perfect pandemic game because it had a shareability where you didn't, it didn't spoil the game. So you just have the colors. So you have this like on-social-media-shareable image that says to your friends, like, 'This is what I did. How did you do?' And so there was that shareability factor that made people check in with each other every day when they were not necessarily able to get together. So, it had this kind of like, it created a glue for people during a really isolating time in our lives. And I think that good feeling and that connection just has continued to exist with this game. People are still in these groups sharing and like even though they're far apart, touching base with each other every day, it really has been a mechanism for that. But also it's just, it's a simple game, but it's not easy. It's a bite-size game that you can kind of play over your coffee in the morning and it doesn't take all day. So I think that it has that appeal too."
As for me, I had somehow managed to avoid Wordle entirely — until working on this story. So, in the interest of thorough journalism, I finally gave it a try. And on my very first game, I guessed the word in three tries.
The word was WISPY.
Now, I am under no illusion that this makes me a Wordle expert. It may have been beginner’s luck. It may have been journalistic instinct. I prefer the second explanation. But it does mean I am currently batting a thousand. And I am strongly considering retiring undefeated.
Non-commercial, fact based reporting is made possible by your financial support. Make your donation to WEMU today to keep your community NPR station thriving.
Like 89.1 WEMU on Facebook and follow us on X (Twitter).
Contact WEMU News at 734.487.3363 or email us at studio@wemu.org.
