from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why is Wordle getting so popular?

by only4here on 2/1/22, 1:32 PM with 2 comments

Is it just me or does every other post on here have to do with some Wordle clone? I enjoy the game, it's fun, but how come HN and the tech community is obsessed with it all the sudden?

  • by eesmith on 2/1/22, 2:53 PM

    Fun and popular game + non-trivial/moderately complex to solve, with multiple possible approaches => HN popularity.

    Wordle came out recently, so it's not like HN could have been obsessed with it years ago.

    It's not just the tech community - non-techies in my family like it.

    You may not remember it, but Sudoku became widely popular starting around 2005. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudoku#Modern_Sudoku .

    This lead to an number of tech people to develop solvers, perhaps Novig's being the most famous, and Ron Jeffries TDD-based failed attempt perhaps the most infamous.

    You can see traces of that period on HN at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=18&prefix=false&q...

  • by Fricken on 2/1/22, 2:23 PM

    If you search "Wordle" in the HN search bar and sort by date, 22 pages worth of posts come up. The first was 2 months ago.