How Wordle brought us back together
Article

How Wordle brought us back together

Spelling Bee, too, and Words With Friends. Who knew online word games would get us talking to each other again?

Schuyler Velasco
Experience Magazine, 2022
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8

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Multiplayer online word games that you can play on your mobile devices are exploding in popularity and social significance. Analog word games like Crossword puzzles have been in newspapers for nearly 100 years. But when games like Wordle and Spelling Bee became available on smartphone apps, the social aspect of word games changed, as Schuyler Velasco reports in Experience magazine. You can play these word games alone, but they don’t have to be solitary pursuits anymore. Now they work as social activities that can bring people together across long distances. 

Summary

Once word games like Wordle and Spelling Bee became available on smartphone apps, the nature of playing word games changed.

Spelling Bee involves seven letters arranged in a circle with one letter in the middle. The objective is to build as many words as possible, always using the central letter. People tweet passionately about their answers, and such online banter is practically part of the game. This is even more so with Wordle. Created by a Brooklyn software developer, the game gives players six attempts to figure out a five-letter word every day. The New York Times purchased the game from developer Josh Wardle in February 2022, and now millions play. People constantly post their scores and the puzzles trend on social media.

Analog word games are hardly new. After all, people have long been obsessed with crossword puzzles. But when word games, such as Scrabble-derivative...

About the Author

Schuyler Velasco, the former deputy editor of Experience Magazine, is now senior writer at NGN Magazine.

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