My first thought upon finding out about the Ice Bucket Challenge several years ago was just wishing I had my life anywhere near together enough that I happened to own a bucket.
Now that I am indeed stable enough to be bucket-status, it’s unfortunately too late. Not just for that particular craze, but for pretty much all of them. Shared moments of ubiquitous harmless fun are rare these days, and when they do crop up, they tend to be in the form of things like Tik Tok sea shanties, which would strain both my vocal abilities and dignity.
So, it was with great joy and curiosity last week that I joined the Green Square Brigade known as Wordle enthusiasts.
Wordle, to anyone who has somehow not yet encountered it, is a digital word game that arrived last October and exploded in popularity in the final days of 2021. It’s essentially a solo Hangman, without the macabre specter of death hanging over it, drawing on deductive reasoning, process of elimination, and breadth of vocabulary. Wordle is just difficult enough to make debt-laden English majors feel chuffed with themselves for winning in only two or three turns.
As clever as its general concept is, however, the main drivers of Wordle’s success seem to be a) that creator Josh Wardle only releases one puzzle a day and offers no back catalog, leaving hooked players craving more, and perhaps more importantly, b) that its shareability function is distinct and eye-catching. Click the share button after you finish playing, and your clipboard now contains not only your score, but a digital representation of the color-coded blocks of your game, ready to paste on the social medium of your choice.
Wordle 205 4/6
⬛????⬛⬛????
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????????????????????Is this good y’all? This is my first wordle…
— NYT Least Relevant Notable of 2021 Jeremy O Harris (@jeremyoharris) January 10, 2022
It’s an offer Wordle players could not refuse. In fact, so many of them began sharing their results over the past couple weeks that the Wordle score tweet quickly became meme fodder.
Wordle 205 47/48 pic.twitter.com/F3nR9YskUn
— Benjamin Dreyer (@BCDreyer) January 10, 2022
howdy howdy howdy
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⬜️⬜️⬜️
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???? ????I’m the wordle sherrif, 420 6/9
— Peggy is a trans lady who draws stuff. Follow her. (@egypturnash) January 5, 2022
[youth pastor voice] wordle? you know whose WORD ‘LL change your life?
⬛️⬛️????⬛️⬛️
⬛️????????????⬛️
⬛️⬛️????⬛️⬛️
⬛️⬛️????⬛️⬛️
⬛️⬛️????⬛️⬛️— J.R.R. Jokin (@joshcarlosjosh) January 9, 2022
When someone shares their Wordle score online, they’re not just bragging about how well they did or lamenting the difficulty of today’s puzzle; they’re also reveling in the ubiquity itself. That thing absolutely everyone…
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