As you may already know, Wordle is a word game that challenges you to guess a 5-letter word. It’s an addictive, once-a-day game that has had a meteoric rise, many copycats, and now versions in non-English languages, including Italian, for those who want to challenge and improve their vocabulary.

Wordle is relatively simple. You have 6 attempts to guess the secret word. Every attempt must be a valid 5-letter word. After each attempt, the colors of the tiles will change to show you how close you are to guessing the word. A letter in a yellow tile means that the letter appears in the secret word but in the wrong place. A letter in a green tile indicates that the letter is in the word in the correct position. A letter in a grey tile means that is is not in the word at all. Here is what it looks like:

The game was invented by Josh Wardle, a software engineer from Brooklyn, for his partner who loved word games. After Wardle’s Wordle became an obsession in his family, he released it to the rest of the world in October 2021. On November 1, 90 people played. By January 1, 2022, 300,000 people plays thanks to viral conversations on Twitter. The New York Times bought the game at the end of January, and now millions play.

There are several reasons for the game’s appeal. As of now, it is free for players, does not have any ads or pop-up banners, it doesn’t ask for money, it takes maybe 3 minutes to play, and it challenges your brain. There is only one game per day (although there are sites with archived games in English); the sense of scarcity, like the game’s simplicity, is perhaps especially appealing during a pandemic.

Since the New York Times put up a paywall in 2011, its’ business objective had been to persuade readers, most of whom receive content digitally, to buy subscriptions to their products like cooking, games, and daily news briefings. The newspaper’s purchase of Wordle reflects the growing importance of games, like crosswords and Spelling Bee, in the company’s quest to increase digital subscriptions.

In Italy, Pietro Peterlongo, a Principal Data Scientist at the ToolsGroup software company based in Milan, developed an Italian version. January 3, 2022 was the launch date. The basic rules are the same as in Wordle and un nuovo gioco di PAROLE appare ogni giorno:

pietroppeter.github.io/wordle-it/