If you haven’t heard about the daily word game Wordle, you must have been off on a silent retreat somewhere. Launched in October, with no fanfare whatsoever, the simple little online game has gone viral, with millions of users. Josh Wardle built Wordle as an antidote for his partner’s pandemic boredom. The rules of Wordle are simple. Every day players get 6 attempts to guess a 5-letter word. With each guess, they get color-coded feedback:

• Green means a letter is both in the word and in the correct place
• Yellow means a letter is in the word, but not the correct place
• Gray means the letter is not in the word

The game has no revenue stream, data collection, or hidden agenda. It was only after players started sharing results organically that Wardle built a share button. He believes part of the reason for rapid growth is the game’s 1-word-per-day limit, which keeps players coming back for more without exhausting their attention.

However, there is one fly in the ointment. There are only so many 5-letter words in English (~12k to be exact). Since many are too obscure for any non-spelling bee types to guess, Wardle whittled the list to 2,500 possible words, which gives the game ~6.5 year time limit in its current form.

Now, I am not a gamer, in fact I haven’t even turned over a Scrabble in years. However, I’ve been sucked into the Wordle world. Curious ? Test your skills on today’s Wordle.