A few tips on taking over the world, one word at a time

Image: Martin Claffey

How long does it take to rule the world? Even Alexander the Great's ancient empire sweeping from Greece to India took a decade to build. And yet Josh Wardle has taken over the world in just four months.

Wardle is the creator of Wordle, a word puzzle game that has captivated players worldwide, with game results shared on social media.

In October 2021, Wardle created the word game for his girlfriend. The concept is simple: a player has six guesses to discover a five-letter word. When a player enters a word, a green background behind a letter indicates that letter is correct. A yellow background indicates a letter is in the word but not in the correct place. Players try to use this information to guess the word correctly in as few guesses as possible.  

From a game to amuse his girlfriend for a few minutes, Wordle now has millions of players worldwide.

With global popularity achieved, there is one five-letter word which has emerged behind the boxes in Wordle which has grown in relevance from the success of the game:  M O N E Y.  Josh Wardle sold Wordle to The New York Times to take over the running of the game, in a deal which has made him a millionaire.

The rise of Wordle has made me think back on some of the modules I have learned about over the past 18 months studying on the MA in Technical Communications and E-Learning at the University of Limerick.  We have researched many Open Educational Resources and learning tools. In my 2021 semester, I created a learning resource — I hope to come back to that another time in the blog over the next few weeks — and also got to see resources created by some of my classmates, and previous students on the course.  

In many ways, Wordle would fit in perfectly among those ideas we discussed in 2021. It's simple. It's educational. It's fun. Indeed, some teachers in the United States are already adapting the game to their classroom.  

Whether consciously or subconsciously, Wardle follows Keller’s ARCS (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction) Model of Motivation. Using his girlfriend as his audience, he used learner analysis to come up with his design.  Wordle captures the learner’s attention, matches the learner’s interests, builds confidence, and gives satisfaction to the learner.

However, critically looking at the game while considering other areas we have studied, Wordle has a little way to go yet. One of the areas we studied on our E-Learning modules was accessibility. Wordle’s system of green and yellow squares on a black background can cause difficulties for some players who have difficulties distinguishing the colours. In response to this, The New York Times has added a high-contrast mode to make reading easier.

Some Wordle players have had found the game causes issues for screen-reading technology.  

But, of course, Wardle didn’t set out to make his game follow universal design principles, to be robust, or to be compatible with assistive technology. He wasn’t considering localisation of his game, or translating and adapting to different languages.

He didn’t set out to create a game to make money, or even to make it popular. It was designed for his girlfriend who liked word games, and The New York Times has intimated that it intends to make the game more accessible for all users  — through some players are already unhappy with some of the puzzle solutions since Wardle handed over curation to the Times.

I believe the success of Wordle is something inspirational for all of us learning and creating at UL. I believe the game illustrates how simple ideas can lead to huge success. And even if an idea is not perfect at first, it can be improved, and made more accessible. Similarily, with our own projects at UL, peer review and testing so often can improve our original ideas.

Maybe one day one of us will follow Josh Wardle’s lead and create something which can bring satisfaction to millions. Building an empire has to start somewhere.