Wordle as a Diversity Tool?

Wordle has become the latest app sensation.

If you’ve not heard of it, it’s a downloadable daily word game where players have six tries to guess a five-letter word.

It was developed by Josh Wardle, a Welsh-born software engineer, for himself and his partner to play. It was released to the public in October 2021.  Once Wardle added the ability for players to copy their own daily results as emoji squares which were subsequently shared widely on Facebook and Twitter, its popularity exploded.  According to published reports, more than 300,000 people played Wordle on Jan. 2, 2022, up from the original 90 players on Nov. 1, 2021.  That figure climbed to more than 2 million a week later.

Now The New York Times Company has acquired Wordle in a seven-figure deal.

The Society of Professional Journalists newsletter said the purchase fits into The Times’ attempt to use puzzles to help reach its goal of increasing digital subscriptions to 10 million by 2025.

Also, at the start of the year, The Times introduced a fellowship for crossword creators to increase the diversity of their puzzles so that underrepresented groups are considered when puzzles are created.