Once a “Relationship” hobby, now a high school addiction

“Wordle is a good time-waster … Especially in school, [Wordle is something] to have fun in class,” says Freni.

Who knew a word guessing game would completely consume an entire high school. This popular word game is known as Wordle. A daily game where you have 6 tries to correctly guess a five-letter word. For each word you guess, the game lets you know which letters you guessed are actually in the correct word and if it’s in the correct place.

Wordle was originally made in October of 2021 by Josh Wardle. At first, Wordle was made to entertain him and his girlfriend because they both shared a connection with spelling bees and other New York Times games that contained grammar use. 

What used to be a game for a nerdy couple, is now a game that revolutionized the way people use grammar forever. This even includes students at Prospect. In my experience, it almost seems as if everyone in my classes is playing Wordle based on my personal experience of seeing them constantly play it. And it’s not just me who is seeing this trend. Sophomore, Tony Freni, also has noticed people play wordle, either during free time or when they aren’t supposed to during class.

“In most classes, I look over at some of my classmates, and most of the time I’ll see Wordle or some form of Wordle clone [on their iPad],” says Freni.

Out of all the things my classmates could have done during their free time, why would they choose to play Wordle?

Freni explains that the main reason why he plays Wordle is how it makes you think and use your brain whilst being very fun to use.

Wordle isn’t the only fun guessing game. With the sudden uprising in Wordle, there have been other games made similar to this, Wordle clones. Just to list a few; Heardle, Chessle, Weedle, Quordle, Worldle, Absurdle, Sweardle, etc.

There is even one called Poeltl, an NBA spinoff of Wordle. You are given a shadow silhouette of a random NBA player and you have 8 tries to correctly guess the player. 

“[Poeltl] is probably the one I enjoy the most … It’s a way to test my NBA knowledge … It’s another fun game to play, like Wordle … and you get to talk about it with your friends and you, sort of, get bragging rights when you [correctly guess who the player is] the first try.

One might even say that it almost seems as if this phenomenon of playing these types of games makes you more intelligent.

“It’s … [a] cognitive brain teaser … It’ll help your brain to keep going for the day,” says Freni.

According to Inverse, Wordle can give “you a daily dose of complex cognition combined with social interaction… Suddenly, millions of people are focused on their vocabulary of five-letter words and are newly aware of concepts like letter frequency and letter position as they strategize about the best opening words and faster solutions.” In a world full of technology, something that doesn’t really need grammar and spelling, who knew that a game made for exactly that could be this popular in a high school, where some students don’t even care for English?

“[Wordle has impacted Prospect] a great deal,” says Freni. Freni also believes the reason it is so much fun is, “just the way it makes you think. There are some games that… you don’t have to use a lot of your brain. In a simple way, it just makes you think, makes you use your brain.”