3 Lessons from Wordle on Making More Successful Creative Work

If you’ve spent any time on Twitter over the past couple of weeks, you’ve probably seen a near endless stream of cryptic posts like the one below, and thought to yourself, “What the hell is going on?”

What the hell is going on is a word game (wonderfully) called Wordle.

As if the name isn’t charming enough on its own, Wordle’s origin story is even better.

The game was developed by software developer Josh Wardle, who wanted to create a game that his crossword-loving partner would enjoy during lockdown.

While the game was initially released publicly released in November, over the past week, Wordle has proliferated across the internet, primarily through Twitter, to the point where hundreds of thousands of people are now playing it daily.

Including me.

I’m only a few days into my Wordle streak at this point (9/9 so far 🤞) but even with limited exposure, it’s clear that there’s a lot this simple word game can teach us as creators.

Before we dive into the lessons Wordle has to offer, however, let’s quickly cover how the game works.

How Wordle Works

The premise of Wordle is simple: correctly guess the mystery five-letter word in six guesses or less.

You can think of it as a sort of cross between Hangman and Wheel of Fortune.

A few other notes on the setup:

1. Every guess must be a real word
2. Letters can be used more than once
3. Once you’ve submitted a guess, the grey letters are those that do not appear in the answer
4. Yellow letters appear in the answer but are currently in the wrong position
5. Green letters appear in the final word and are in the correct position
6. There is only one puzzle…