Is Wordle dead? Data from Google reveals the game is not as popular as it used to be
Wordle, one of the web’s most popular online guessing game, has begun to lose interest among those who once played it religiously, according to Google Trends data
The five-letter word game took over social media earlier this year, with Facebook timelines and Twitter feeds being flooded with gray, white, green and yellow squares that displayed scores of the day.
Although it was only five months ago that the game’s popularity reached its peak, posting your score to social media accounts, or in some cases even playing it, is a thing of the past.
Google Trends popularity scores represent the relative search interest of a term for any given region and time. Values of 100 are awarded to terms when they reach peak popularity while a value of 50 is given when the term becomes half as popular.
According to most recent data, Wordle has now reached the halfway mark on its descent from the game’s February peak.
From Feb. 19 to July 2, the national popularity of the term “Wordle” has been on a steady decline, dropping by 51% in just five months. In North Carolina, the term’s popularity score dipped even further with a decrease of 59%.
Aside from the obvious reasons why trends die out, there are a few other factors that may have greatly contributed to the fall of Wordle, according to Vidhi Choudhary, a global economics reporter for The Street.
Choudhary suggests that a combination of Wordle’s acquisition by The New York Times, how easy it is to cheat and the monotony of the game likely led to its demise.
“…New York Times Co. bought Wordle for a ‘low-seven-figure’ sum as part of its gaming division. But the viral word game has since lost out on users,” Choudhary wrote. “The drop in popularity could also be because users have found ways to cheat the game.”
There has been a tick upwards this week, most likely due to controversy stirred by the word of the day on July 6. Some users took to social media to complain about the tricky solution which required three of the same letter, an unusual occurrence for Wordle words.
New York Times Games released a statement in May after a word “closely connected to a major recent news event” was unintentionally chosen as the word of the day.
An attempt to purge the word from the system caused a glitch that led to confusion among players as some correctly guessed one word while others had a completely different word as their answer.
In the statement, New York Times Games said they would continue trying to perfect the game for the “tens of millions” of players who still play.
“When we acquired Wordle in January, it had been built for a relatively small group of users. We’re now busy revamping Wordle’s technology so that everyone always receives the same word,” New York Times Games wrote in the statement. “We are committed to ensuring that tens of millions of people have a gratifying and consistent experience, every day.”
