By Tyler Blakeley
In 2013, a software engineer in Brooklyn named Josh Wardle created a game called “Mr Bugs’ Wordy Nugz”. In early 2021, he revived the game as a gift for his partner, who loved word games. He called it Wordle, a pun on his surname.
It was something that the two of them could play while stuck at home during COVID, and was hosted on a private website.
After a few months of playing privately, he sent it to the family WhatsApp group chat. It was a smash hit. Shortly after, in October 2021, he released it to the public.
In November 2021 it had 90 plays. By January 2022 it had 300,000 daily users. In a press conference from May of this year The New York Times announced that Wordle made up roughly six billion of the 11 billion puzzles played on its platform in 2025.
By February 2022 I was hooked, playing every day and sharing the results to my own family group chat.
Wordle and other “Wordle-likes” have taken over my morning commute ever since. Sometimes, in the years since, I’ve lapsed on doing the puzzles for weeks at a time, but I will always come back.
The classic Wordle formula gives users six attempts to guess a five-letter word. The letters go green when in the correct space, yellow if they’re in the wrong space, grey if they’re not in the word.
This evergreen formula has been iterated on, and then reiterated on, a thousand times. My favourite of these is Fibble, where each guess you make has one “fib”, forcing you to find the word while navigating the fib on each line.
A comprehensive list of Wordle variants is maintained by Github user Maxspero and lists almost 100 unique variants.
There’s Globle, where you need to find the location on a map. Heardle is for music, Filmdle is for film, and so on.
From a neurological perspective there are clear benefits to playing your daily puzzle games. One major aspect is its simplicity.
The layout has no flashing banners or ads vying for your attention, it’s just a grey background with empty tiles.
For your brain, that “clean screen” is a breath of fresh air.
A study published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry linked regular engagement with word puzzles to improved focus, working memory and information processing. Wordle is actively exercising your mind by forcing you to hold and eliminate letter combinations in your head.
If you’re somebody that has never played these puzzle games, or maybe somebody that played them in COVID but hasn’t thought about them since, giving them a try could make a large difference in your day-to-day.
Over the last few years the importance of taking a break from your work has been drilled into our heads. We know that we need to take breaks, go for walks, or otherwise destress.
These games are performing a similar purpose. They’re a break from your stressful work environment where you can sit back and let your brain do the work.
For five to ten minutes a day we allow our brains to focus on one structured, solvable problem. It’s almost meditation in how serene it can feel to immerse yourself in a puzzle and slowly work it out.
In a world where our time is always taxed so heavily by access to our mobile phones, it’s hard to dedicate a few minutes to solving a puzzle for no reason other than “just because”. But taking the initiative to solve that puzzle every day gives our brain a much-needed break from monotonous daily life and comes with a host of benefits.
Featured Image: Dramatised Wordle Answers. Artwork: Tyler Blakeley
