If you’re not playing Wordle then what are you doing? The word game – which requires you to solve a five-letter word in six attempts – has the world on a chokehold.
The simple challenge – created by software engineer Josh Wardle for his partner – was recently acquired by the New York Times which, some people say, has made the game more difficult and less enjoyable.
Whether or not you’ve found it to be different since the acquisition (NYT, as far as we know, did not input any new words, and actually made some easier), you can’t deny the appeal of completing the task every day.
And the fact that you can only do one Wordle per day has also curbed our instant gratification minds and given interest in the game some longevity (can you imagine unlimited Wordle, our interest could be lost pretty quickly?).
So we spoke to a neuroscientist to find out what actually happens to our brains while we play this beautiful brain teaser every day.
Proffesor Sophie Scott, a director at The Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL, tells us why Wordle has taken the world by storm.
“The main reason why Wordle is compelling is that humans have got very big brains, and they’re very, very good at problem solving,” she tells HuffPost.
“Things like puzzles and games like Wordle are very good examples of accessible and enjoyable, solvable problems, as there’s a solution to them.
“I think it’s compelling because you know you’re going to be able to do this and it’s not obvious how you’re going to get there and everybody’s got their own strategies for how to approach it. So I think that’s one of the main reasons it’s compelling; that’s what our brains are set up to do.”
Professor Scott tells us that a similar response sparks off in our brain when we play Wordle as it does when we try to solve a maths problem.
“The processes happening in our brains when we play the word game are very general processes associated with what we do when we solve problems in the brain, this could be a math problem or a detective story or something where there’s a problem to be solved,” she explains. “And those are engaging brain areas in the prefrontal cortex and in the parietal cortex that are strongly associated with what’s called executive functions.”
These sorts of brain functions kick in when we do something that takes effort or requires us to pay attention, she explains.
“You’ve also got brain areas associated with verbal recall. So you’ve got to think of different words that might fit the different constraints,” she adds. “And that’s going to be engaging recollection and access to memory areas.”
No one can deny the appeal of guessing the word correctly in a few attempts (some say on one or two goes are flukes). But thanks to the rush of chemicals we get when we achieve something, does Wordle stand a risk of becoming addictive? After all, it has warranted several spin-offs, many who entice users by removing the cap of one a day.
“It probably can get addictive because what happens when you solve the problem, and particularly if you solve it quickly, is that you get a little bit of a bumper reward, you feel good, and that’s coming from a different brain area associated with reward processing associated with things like neurotransmitters like dopamine,” explains Prof. Scott. “So when there is this reward of feeling good when you achieve something that you wanted to get, there can be an element of addiction to it.
“It’s not addiction in the same way as something more serious, but it’s definitely one of the reasons why again, it remains very compelling because you want to feel good when you solved it.”
How did you do on today’s Wordle, then?