Wordle is doomed; here's why

It might be the most popular game online right now, but Fran Whiting has a dire prediction for the future of Wordle.

How do we know when a craze begins, or ends?

Take Wordle, for instance, the word guessing game that’s taken the world by storm, but is showing some signs of waning. If you haven’t played, it’s basically a free, website game (not an app), played on any device.

Players have six tries to correctly guess a random, five-letter word. After each guess the letter tiles change colour; green for the right letter and the right position, yellow for the right letter, but the wrong position; and grey for both the wrong letter and in the wrong position.

And, considering just how many five-letter words there are, it’s remarkably easy to guess the right word in the six turns allotted.

Drink is a word. Caulk?

Or rather it was, because the New York Times recently bought the game off the original creator, and there is a perception that the new owners have made it much harder.

The Times has been throwing in words like “ultra” when the nice young man who originally created Wordle chose words like “beans” and “tiger”.

But things recently came to a head when The Times chose “caulk” as a word and people lost their minds. I mean they really lost them. CAULK? People wrote on social media, CAULK?! WHAT THE F#%K IS CAULK?

The Times itself was inundated with strongly worded letters, and some readers said they were done with Wordle, done.

Not me, I was too busy being unbearably smug because I knew what caulk was, and got it in three turns. Three. Anyway, it’s a sealing substance used to fill gaps, by the way, you’re welcome. And yes, I may currently be renovating a bathroom.

Anyway, since Caulkgate, the word(le) on the street is that people are tiring of the game, with or without the tricky words or whiny letters to the Times saying it’s too haaaaard.

Personally I believe the Wordle craze might be coming to its end because people are finally realising it’s basically hangman.

American spellings tripping up Aussie players.

I’m sorry, but it is; guessing vowels and consonants by the process of elimination within a certain amount of turns? I’m telling you, Wordle is hangman in exactly the same way slow cookers are, in fact, crockpots, and glamping is camping with fairy lights.

Anyway, I’m interested in how these things rise and fall, why do some things capture our collective imagination so quickly, only to just as quickly disappear.

Wordle could stay the distance, or it could go the same way as Pokemon Go, or Furbies, or Hula Hoops, or any one of the many games and products we’ve all been mad about, then lost all interest in. Particularly children’s toys; I personally still bear the scars of the Great Tickle Me Elmo stampede of 1997, of which I ultimately emerged triumphant with one for my then little boy; albeit with a warning from store security.

But Tickle Me Elmo himself? Somewhere in a cupboard, forgotten, his last plaintive cries of “La, la, la, la” unheard.

Will Wordle go the same way? I’m not sure, perhaps if The Times keeps throwing curly ones at players, like caulk. Although, some of us got it. In three.

Originally published as Wordle is doomed; here's why