Why Wordle beats all puzzles, old and new Wordle, the viral game that asks you to guess a five-letter word, ticks all the boxes as a business pitch for The New York Times, taking all the fun out of classic physics puzzles and adapting them for your web browser. Will it survive the initial confusion and prove itself as a worthy successor to Crossword and Scrabble? In early 2014, Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen pulled “Flappy Bird” from app stores because the most popular mobile game at the time was too hot to handle. Dong said he “can’t do this anymore” and that it is “ruining his simple life”, posting 50 million Android downloads and $50,000 in ad revenue per day. Eight years ago, Josh Wardle had a different destiny in store.
