# Wordle

> One engineer's free daily word game reached about 2 million daily players in three months.

- Owner: Josh Wardle; The New York Times Company from January 2022
- Kind: Game
- Sector: Gaming
- Seed date: Oct 2021
- Peak date: Week of Feb 21, 2022
- Date basis: Dates use the stated precision; chart positions are date anchors.
- Spread Score: 63 (Viral), v1.2
- Mechanics: Shareable output, Daily ritual, Maker origin, Dupe economy, Press loop

## Summary

The share button standardized Wordle’s spoiler-free grids. Twitter’s own analysis distinguished 23.5 million English score-sharing posts from general mentions and reported that New Zealand became a mainstream Wordle conversation earlier than other countries.

## Timeline

- Oct 2021 — Josh Wardle (Open web) — Josh Wardle released Wordle as a free web game in October 2021, after it caught on in his family group chat.
- 2021-11-01 — Players (Open web) — 90 people played Wordle on November 1. (90 players)
- 2021-11-24 — David Ritchie (X) — New Zealand web developer David Ritchie tweeted that Wordle was like Mastermind for 5-letter words.

The full timeline, metrics and sources are on the case page, or via the Pro API (https://howitspread.com/developers).

Canonical URL: https://howitspread.com/cases/wordle

Cite as: How It Spread (2026). “Wordle.” Case HIS-00357. Spread Score v1.2: 63/100. Updated 2026-10-17. https://howitspread.com/id/HIS-00357