The Real Effect of One Puzzle a Day

If you’ve been on Twitter in the past month, you might have heard of ‘Wordle’, the new Mastermind meets Scrabble game taking the world by storm. Over 300,000 now play everyday, but how did it become such a phenomenon? C. Thi Nguyen, philosophy professor at the University of Utah and author of Games: Agency as Art, talks Alex Andreou about why Wordle has proven such a hit, from its simple design to the joy of shareability.

• “A lot of the most interesting games are confined.”
• “The thing that makes Wordle so unique is the shareablility.”
• “I was seeing people sharing these square stacks and wondered what it was.”
• “Games are an activity and a struggle, but they’re a struggle that we shape for our own enjoyment.”
• “The real effect of the ‘one-puzzle-a-day’ is the social effect. You can see and feel how others found the puzzle.”

Presented by Alex Andreou. The group editor is Andrew Harrison. The Lead Producer is Jacob Jarvis. Producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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