Your Obsession with Wordle, Explained

This article was written by Rayna Indelication & Katie Ng.

Grids of green, yellow, and gray squares have recently flooded your Twitter feed, and before you know it, you too have fallen into the allure of today’s most viral game: Wordle.

Wordle is a simple word game that features a random five-letter word every day. Players have six attempts to guess this word, and the accuracy of each guess is denoted by color-coded tiles. A green highlight indicates that the letter is in the word and in the correct position, yellow indicates that the letter is found somewhere in the word but is in the wrong position, and gray indicates that the letter is not in the word at all. For five to ten minutes each day, millions of players take a break from their daily routine to guess a mere five letters, and we can’t help but wonder: is there an explanation for our obsession with Wordle?

Matt Baldwin is a social psychologist and professor at the University of Florida who has broken down what exactly has caused Wordle to be so addicting. He first points to the “aha” moment. Even if you lose the puzzle, the answer being exposed provides a “sudden influx of fluency” which is a feeling we seek as humans in many different aspects of our lives. 

Another reason Baldwin points to is our shortened attention spans. It is no surprise that the pandemic has affected our attention spans in a very significant way. Wordle is the perfect word puzzle that makes us feel like we are “training our brain” without taking too much effort or attention.

Furthermore, Wordle allows you to share your results after you have completed the puzzle. Seeing it all over social media has definitely led to its success. It also serves as a bonding factor as everyone is working to solve the same puzzle. As simple as it may seem, it does encourage social interaction in many ways. Not only does it encourage social interaction, but it also allows individuals to see how they measure up to their friends and family, a friendly competition if you will. This website not only allows individuals to feel like they are a part of a group but allows people to compare themselves in a more welcoming way.

As well as its social aspects, it also does not allow for “binging.” While there have been many other websites developed that have infinite word puzzles, Wordle itself has only one puzzle a day, making it difficult to overplay or get bored very quickly.

Wordle is the short, social-media driven version of the daily crossword that had been around for over a century. While it may speak to our current generation’s attention span and need for academic validation of sorts, it is undoubtedly an addicting game for many good reasons. And it allows for us all to bond over the ridiculous choice of words.