In October 2021, software engineer Josh Wardle uploaded his creation to the world—Wordle™. This once-a-day online game gives players six tries to identify a five-letter word, while offering clues and confirmations about which letters go where. Wardle's Wordle soon went from a gift he had designed for his sweetheart to a phenomenon played by millions at home, school, and work.

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"Even though I play it every day, I still feel a sense of accomplishment when I do it," Wardle told The Guardian.

The chance to practice their smarts is why so many people love word games, and Wordle follows in the grand tradition of crossword puzzles, Scrabble®, and word searches. Logophiles from first-grade classrooms to retirement communities play them faithfully to cultivate vocabulary and stimulate their brains—research shows that word games are excellent ways to exercise the mind and boost memory. Here's how a few favorites went from rudimentary ideas to household words.

Crossword Puzzles

Cruciverbalists, better known as crossword fans, owe their favorite game to a newspaper editor named Arthur Wynne. In 1913, he wanted a new diversion for the FUN section of the New York World. He drew a grid of numbered squares matched with clues and christened it "FUN's Word-Cross Puzzle." A typographical error subsequently renamed the game "Crossword Puzzle," and the transposition stuck. Wynne's winning creation quickly became a craze, and newspapers around the country developed their own versions.

One exception was the New York Times, which in one 1924 editorial demeaned crosswords as "a primitive sort of mental exercise." The famed newspaper held out until 1942, when it finally launched its own. Ironically, many crossword connoisseurs now consider the Times puzzle the crème de la crème of the genre.

Scrabble

Alfred Mosher Butts claimed he wasn't good at spelling, but that didn't impede his invention of the quintessential board game for wordsmiths. The Great Depression of the 1930s left the architect unemployed, so he began toying with game ideas. His vision was to design a crossword-like word game that assigned points to the different letters and could be scored for competitive play. He called it "Criss-Cross Words" and sold a limited number, but every major game manufacturer rebuffed the concept. Then he met James Brunot, who helped Butts refine the rules and come up with the catchier name the game bears today.

Scrabble's big score came in 1952. According to legend, an executive with Macy's department stores encountered the game while on vacation, decided to stock it, and soon customers were scrabbling for a set of their own. In total, Scrabble has sold 150 million copies in 29 languages, and is found in three out of five American homes, according to Hasbro, the game's manufacturer.

Word Search

In 1968, Norman E. Gibat, the publisher of Selenby Digest in Norman, Oklahoma, inserted a word game in his publication to entertain readers while they stood in line at the grocery store. He concealed the names of Oklahoma cities in a grid of letters and challenged readers to find them. Thus, Word Search was born and quickly became popular among area teachers, who spread the word to colleagues elsewhere. (About the same time, Spanish game-maker Pedro Ocón de Oro invented an identical game dubbed Sopa de Letras—"Soup of Letters"—and he often shares credit for developing the idea.)

Gibat's digest folded in 1970, and he had no interest in continuing its most popular feature. But by then word searches had taken on a life of their own, going by names like "Seek and Circle" and "Mystery Word." Word Search games remain wildly popular and a staple for educators seeking engaging ways to reinforce vocabulary.

Time will tell if Wordle joins the ranks of these legendary word games, though fame was never the motivation for its developer. As Wardle told the New York Times: "I think people kind of appreciate that there's this thing online that's just fun."

Think about and discuss these questions:
Which word game sounds most interesting to you and why?
What do you think is the secret to making a popular word game?

Question 3


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Which of these is most important to include in a summary of this article?

Word games have long enjoyed popularity with people of many ages.
Some word games are popular with teachers for vocabulary instruction.
Word games have at times gone through name or rule changes.
Some word games were invented by people in the publishing industry.

Answer 1

In summarizing the article, the most important point to include is:

Word games have long enjoyed popularity with people of many ages.

This statement encapsulates the overall theme of the article, which highlights the enduring appeal of word games across different demographics and time periods. While the other points are relevant, they are more specific details that support this broader observation. The essential takeaway is the widespread enjoyment of word games, which helps convey the significance of these games in various contexts, from education to leisure.