Wordle trend: Brands create memes, promos inspired by viral word game

By
Catalina Ricci S. Madarang
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January 20, 2022 - 6:17 PM
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Art by Rhovin Luke Maglaqui/Interaksyon

Social media pages of brands joined in the trend of an online word game that recently gained popularity as the world welcomed 2022.

Wordle is a website-based game where players have to guess a five-letter word in the form of color-coded tiles.

Each player is only given six chances. Only one word is also given in a day.

The tile turns green if you guess the right letter in the right place. It turns yellow if you didn’t get it right. A gray tile appears if the letter you guessed isn’t in the missing word.

By mid-January, scores of players filled social media feeds with images of green, yellow and gray tiles from the game.

These include Hollywood celebrities like Jimmy Fallon who shared his Wordle results to his followers.

Some brands in the country soon rode the trend and created content such as memes and promotions inspired by the game.

Grab Philippines referenced the Wordle tile score in its previous promo where customers can get P59 off from their orders if they got the right word.

“Kahit 6th attempt, deserve pa rin ang reward! Get P59 off* your orders! Promo code is today’s word (shushing emoji) Valid only for today,” read its post.

McDonald’s Philippines also referenced the tile blocks in its post about its famous fries.

TikTok Philippines asked its Twitter followers what would happen if it hosted the game.

It also added white boxes similar to the ones in Wordle in the Twitter thread.

“If Wordle was hosted by TikTok: a thread,” the main tweet read.

Local shirt brand and content creator, Linya-Linya, on the other hand, shared a an artwork of a word puzzle with boxes.

The text in the boxes reads: “Brain cells ko pagod na.”

“I am at a loss for words. Brain cells, and’yan ka pa ba? Paramdam ka naman, say Aaaaa…” its caption said.

It was referring to the difficulty in guessing words on Wordle.

Several Filipino personalities also shared Wordle scores on Twitter.

These include Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, award-winning author Edgar Calabia Samar, Saab Magalona and Bianca Gonzales, among others.

Why Wordle is popular

Wordle was created by Josh Wardle, a software engineer who resides in Brooklyn, New York in the United States.

According to a feature by the New York Times, Wardle initially designed the game for him and his girlfriend to play with during the pandemic.

In October 2021, he released it to the public.

When the game started to take off, Wardle added a score-sharing option in the game to allow players to easily post their scores online.

Some experts interviewed by The Insider said that the visual blocks or tiles that represent how you arrived at the word add appeal to the game.

“The posts are instantly recognizable, so whether or not you’ve done today’s challenge, you feel like you’re part of the game,” Juliet Landau-Pope, a social scientist, was quoted as saying.

“Constantly seeing the squares in our Twitter feed indicates that there is something to be solved, and others are on the case,” British psychologist Lee Chambers was quoted as saying.

Another older word game app with its namesake also gained traction after some users confuse it with the website-based puzzle.

When its developer Steven Cravotta found out, he reached out to Wardle.

Cravotta shared on Twitter that both of them decided on donating the proceeds of his game to a charity called “Boost West Oakland.”

Some developers, however, created identical apps of Wordle to profit off its popularity.

Apple Inc. recently removed several clone apps of Wordle from its App Store.

READ: Apple pulls Wordle knockoffs from App Store 

 

 

 

 

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