If you logged onto Twitter precisely one 12 months in the past, you possibly can most likely recall the second you started to see your feed replenish with grey, yellow, and inexperienced bins. Though it launched in 2021 and gained mainstream reputation in December of that 12 months, Wordle turned a sudden cultural phenomenon in early 2022 that was inescapable outdoors of a muted phrases record. It was a uncommon gaming success story, one that would attain a broad viewers due to its elegant simplicity.
Wordle’s fortune would escalate simply as shortly as its person base. In late January 2022, the New York Times introduced it had acquired the puzzle recreation from creator Josh Wardle in an undisclosed, low-seven-figure deal — a left-field transfer that just about eclipsed Sony’s announcement that it was buying Destiny 2 developer Bungie simply hours earlier. The transfer would spark some fear amongst followers, who feared {that a} company takeover of probably the most unbiased recreation possible might steal its soul.
Why Is Wordle So Popular and Why Did The New York Times Buy It?
One 12 months later, Wordle hasn’t misplaced a little bit of its attraction. The puzzle recreation remains to be going robust, and it’s given the New York Times a newfound confidence because it doubles down on its gaming arm. As the publication appears to enter its second 12 months with Wordle, Jonathan Knight, the pinnacle of Games at The New York Times, spoke with Digital Trends at CES 2023. Knight reveals what’s been taking place behind the scenes over the previous 12 months and the way NYT Games has discovered success by resisting the urge to repair what was by no means damaged.
The web’s recreation
For The New York Times, the whirlwind Wordle acquisition was a no brainer. From the soar, the publication felt the sport already had the appear and feel of considered one of its personal video games, all the way down to its modest aesthetic. The $3 million deal got here collectively shortly to capitalize on its rising success, however the Games crew was simply as anxious about ruining factor as its gamers have been.
“It took us a bit of time to integrate, and it challenged us,” Knight tells Digital Trends. “Were we really ready for that? Were we ready for that many users? Were we ready to just add another game to our portfolio? Was the platform ready? It stretched a lot of muscles for us that now gives us a different perspective that we could do that again.”
From the start, my message to the crew was “don’t change anything about this game.”

In order to maintain the boat from rocking, the Games crew decided early on to maintain the fundamentals of Wordle unchanged. It would work to enhance the expertise with outdoors instruments like WordleBot, however Knight acknowledged that the attraction of the sport got here from its simplicity.
“Our whole approach from the very beginning was to do no harm to the game,” Knight says. “We recognized that Wordle was an internet treasure. It kind of belonged to the internet. When we bought it, there was a lot of anxiety about what would happen … From the beginning, my message to the team was ‘don’t change anything about this game.’”
While that philosophy would information Wordle by its first 12 months below The New York Times’ banner, the crew wouldn’t shut itself off to adjustments totally. In reality, Knight notes that the crew did think about making some adjustments and hasn’t dominated out the potential for doing so down the road to maintain it recent.
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“We’d be remiss if we didn’t brainstorm all of the different things we could do to make Wordle more engaging, to retain those users,” Knight says. “That’s not to say that we won’t do those kinds of things in the future. I think we’re definitely over the initial cultural phenomenon and we’re very pleased with the level of audience that’s still on the game. But I think going forward, now that we’ve got the basics covered … I think there’s an opportunity to do more with the game. I wouldn’t ever change the basic nature of the game, but I think there’s more we can do around it.”
Building on magnificence
While it could seem to be Wordle hasn’t modified a lot within the final 12 months on its floor, tons has occurred behind the scenes. There have been delicate tweaks to the sport’s again finish, making it simpler for gamers to maintain their stats protected. A partnership with Hasbro turned the sport into its personal franchise, whereas a not too long ago revealed collaboration with Delta Air Lines will take the sport to the open skies.
The most important (although principally imperceptible) change got here when The New York Times’ Tracy Bennett turned Wordle’s official editor, overseeing what was beforehand a preprogrammed record of phrases creator Josh Wardle had put collectively. To an outsider, the concept of an editor monitoring a recreation that options one five-letter phrase a day would possibly sound foolish. But the New York Times shortly discovered that it was a crucial step when coping with a cultural phenomenon.
“It’s important to us to have someone who has that responsibility for what that word is every day,” Knight says. “When we acquired the game, Josh Wardle had preprogrammed several years worth of answers. All those answers were set in your browser. We had no idea it would blow up and take over the world and we’d all be watching Anderson Cooper interview Monica Lewinsky on CNN about Wordle. But that happened!”

Knight’s level was confirmed final 12 months when the unassuming recreation bumped into its solely actual controversy. Shortly after a leak revealed the Supreme Court deliberate to overturn Roe v. Wade, Wordle customers bumped into an ill-timed answer: fetus. The Games crew was conscious that the phrase was within the pipeline days forward of time, however couldn’t do a lot about it resulting from how the glossary was programmed.
“That was a moment in time where we had not yet integrated it into our back end,” Knight says. “We weren’t technically able to change the answer on a dime. Fetus had been programmed almost a year earlier on that particular day. We had a programmer who flagged, ‘Hey everybody, in two days the answer is going to be fetus,’ and that was two days after the leaked Roe v. Wade decision had made headlines. We made the editorial decision that it shouldn’t be the answer that day, and if we were fully integrated, we just would have made that change and no one would have ever known.”
The subsequent huge factor
The New York Times was shortly capable of clean that out with a number of easy choices (Knight notes that the crew hasn’t pulled a phrase since, however is assured it’ll occur finally). Since then, Wordle has remained secure, working in its similar every day routine. And whereas it’s now not a dominant pressure on Twitter feeds, its reputation nonetheless stays robust. In reality, Wordle was probably the most searched time period on Google in 2022.
My imaginative and prescient for New York Times Games is to be the premier subscription vacation spot for digital puzzles, interval.

That success has rubbed off on The New York Times’ different choices. Knight notes that Spelling Bee particularly has seen progress due to Wordle, with the phrase recreation touchdown 77 million “geniuses” in 2022. While Wordle could also be a scorching matter for gamers, it’s just one piece of a bigger establishment that Knight has bold plans for.
“My vision for New York Times Games is to be the premier subscription destination for digital puzzles, period,” Knight stated. “We have a very big ambition for that and it’s an enormous opportunity. We can reach many more people than we’re reaching now. We can improve our product, our puzzles, our games, the features around the games, the metagame … there’s so much we’re going to be doing to build and deliver a world class, human-made daily puzzle service.”
Can we anticipate one other Wordle-sized phenomenon in 2023? Even Knight admits that it’s unlikely, calling the sport a “lightning in a bottle” second. Even so, Knight says that the sport has modified the New York Times’ notion of its gaming model and put the crew on excessive alert for the following huge hit. There could also be one other unassuming puzzle recreation creator on the market proper now who may very well be the following individual to obtain a multimillion greenback payout for a good suggestion.

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