I sat down a few moments ago for my guilty-pleasure morning ritual. The coffee was ready, I flipped open my laptop and—
“Oh what the hell is this,” I said out loud.
The game was still the same. But the background of the site had changed from dark gray to white.
I checked the URL. It was no longer some weird .co.uk domain. It was now nytimes.com.
Perhaps you’ve seen the same.
After all, millions of people around the world have all been playing this game each day, and millions more have been joining them week by week.
The game is a word-guessing game, called Wordle, created by a guy named Josh Wardle.
Wardle created Wordle some time ago as a game that just he and his girlfriend could play together. His friends and family got in on it too. Then Wardle released Wordle publicly on his website last October.
That first month, a total of 90 people played it.
Two months later, in December, the number of people playing Wordle each day had grown to 300,000.
By January, it was millions each day.
On February 1st, the New York Times bought Wordle from Wardle, for a “low 7 figures” sum. And today, here we are, with the stupid, white, failing NYT background.
Oh well. In the end, the corporations absorb everything. But let’s talk influence:
I can see many things that went into making Wordle a success. I want to point out just one. It might be relevant to you if you are interested in the creative or marketing side of reality.
Like, I said, Wordle is my guilty-pleasure morning ritual.
That’s because there’s only one Wordle puzzle each day.
Once you play — whether you win or lose — that’s it. You gotta wait until tomorrow, when the next one comes out.
This has a few key consequences:
One of course is scarcity. It makes each Wordle puzzle feel more valuable and interesting. It keeps you coming back day after day.
Two is that you can’t glut yourself.
With most games – and with things other than games too — I often keep playing to the point where I start to feel disgusted.
But there’s no risk of that with Wordle. It’s like a Spartan marriage. The two sides meet only rarely, and are full of desire for each other.
But maybe the most important thing is that each Wordle puzzle feels unique and real.
Wordle grew so quickly because players shared their results on Twitter. (Through a clever design, Wardle allowed people to share their results without giving away the puzzle.)
That worked because there is only one puzzle a day. Everybody in the world who played Wordle on a given day had that same puzzle.
In other words, it made sense to brag about your results, because other Wordle players actually shared your experience. It even created a sense of connection to other people playing Wordle.
But maybe you haven’t played Wordle yet, and you’re getting lost in what I’m talking about. Or maybe you’re wondering what this might mean for you, or how can you use this.
I’ll give you just one idea bouncing around in my head:
For a long time, I’ve been writing these daily emails, and then posting them to my website as an archive. This has helped me in the past because these blog archives were the main way people found me and my newsletter.
But that’s slowly changing. And so today I remembered an idea I had a while ago:
To scrap the archive, and simply post the latest daily email on my site. Each day, the email on the front page would be updated, and the previous email would disappear. Plus there would be a newsletter optin form for people who don’t want to miss out.
I’m not sure if this is smart. I’m not sure whether I will do it. But maybe.
Because Wardle’s Wordle success shows that in a world where everybody’s working hard to get you as addicted and engaged as possible… less can be more.
Anyways, if you have any advice for me on the technical side of how I could easily implement my latest-email-front-page idea on my WordPress site, please write in and let me know.
And if you haven’t played Wordle yet, you can find it on the white-background page at the link below. (I got today’s puzzle in two tries only — my best score yet.)