Page 18 - Issue-40

ELITE

What's the word everyone's looking

for today?
Mariam Ismail, L2, Political Science

While scrolling through social media, I have After it first dropped, the game was played by very
stumbled upon tweets containing nothing but a title few people but soon after it spread widely not only in
and cubes emoji in grey, yellow and green. First, I the United States where it first started but in the
used to just ignore it but soon enough my curiosity whole world. This widespread was due to many
got the best of me to find out what does it mean. factors. First, even though there are many free games
That is when I found out about ‘WORDLE’ a daily out there, they always come with a baggage of
word game, not just that but I also got hooked and advertisements, purchases and other restrictions
started waiting for midnight each day to find out pushing you to purchase a premium or a better
what is the word we’re looking for today. That is not version; yet in Wordle players didn’t face the same
just me, it’s actually the case of more than 3 million restrictions which rendered the game more easy to
people around the world.
handle and likeable. Second, the game managed to

So what’s Wordle exactly? Initially created by create a balance between being interesting and not
programmer Josh Wardle to play with his partner consuming a lot of time; on one hand, as the game is
during the pandemic and quarantine time, the game made to drop only one word daily the players spend
website was released on the 31st of October 2021. It less than 30 minutes trying to find the solution and
consist of a new word of 5 letters dropping every once it’s over they have to wait for the next day as
day at midnight, each player has 6 guesses to find there is nothing more they can do. On the other hand,
the word. When each guess is entered letters start the scarcity and entropy on which the game is based
flipping; if they’re grey it means this letter isn’t in has perked a lot of intellectual minds; finance
the word, if it’s yellow then it means the letter is in speculators, mathematicians, linguists and
the word but in the wrong placement and if it’s programmers are the most interested in the game,
green then it’s in the word and the right placement. their goal is to find the ultimate way of solving the
Out of 12000 5 letters word in English, Wardle daily mystery, many theories, studies and statistics
chose only 2500 to include in the game which means have been made trying to decipher the key to win the
it could last for 7 years; the chosen words makes the game. While it might seem a bit exaggerated for a
game more fair due to the fact that he omitted the game, this has been one of the reasons why a lot of
words that requires high knowledge in special people started noticing the game in the first place.
domains and only left general ones.

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Vol.1, Issue 40, February 2022
Vol.1, Issue 40, February 2022