The creator of Wordle on life after a hit and his new puzzle

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast.

You know, Josh Wardle never set out to become a star of the puzzle world.

He created his smash hit online game, Wirtle, for one person, his partner.

But at the end of 2021, Wirtle took off. It became a sensation.

People all over the world were sharing their daily Wirtle scores online and in group chats.

And then Josh sold the game to the New York Times, and he walked away.

What do you do after you have created a game that everyone plays?

Well, now he's back with a new puzzle game. It's called Perseward.

Josh Wardle joins us from Bristol, England.

Josh, hello.

Thank you very much for that introduction.

Thank you for being here.

I mean, creating something is a big thing.

Creating a couple of things is a big thing.

How does it feel after one thing that you made was a big success to launch something else out into the world?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I definitely had a lot with this new game.

I had some anxiety, like, you know, difficult second album.

You know, I've made Wirtle.

I've made it for my partner.

I had no expectations of it becoming anywhere near as big as it did.

And then to try and follow that up has been, yeah, it has given me some anxiety.

I think it's been, it is nice.

It has been a while.

It has been, you know, almost five years, I think, since I sold Wirtle.

I couldn't have done this game immediately off the little.

I needed a gap.

Yeah.

Now I'm feeling feeling good.

And, you know, I never thought I would have wanted to make another word game.

And here I am making another word game.

Why would you have never thought knowing your success?

Why would you have thought you would have never made another word game?

So here's the thing.

I found the experiment.

I enjoyed making Wirtle, but the experience of going viral and its success.

Like, obviously, it was great for me in some ways.

But I found it deeply unpleasant.

And around the time part of what motivated me to sell the game to the New York Times was how unhappy.

I was like, I was waking up miserable because of Wirtle, which seems bizarre, right?

Because it was just this fun game that brought so much joy to so many people.

Which I appreciate and I'm thankful for.

But just for me, that level of attention was not enjoyable.

Can you tell me more about that?

You said, these are your words that I'm not sure humans are built to handle going viral.

What was that experience like to know that you have created something that people,

one of the first things that people did when they woke up was to play their Wirtle, do their Wirtle.

You would think that that would give somebody great joy.

But as you said, it was destabilizing for you.

Well, there were a number of things going on.

I think I felt a sense of responsibility.

When the stakes were making something for my partner that she and I play on the couch in the morning as we drink our tea,

that is very different from millions of people playing.

And did we accidentally pick a word that has negative connotation?

But if things broke, I would feel responsible for it so that there was that pressure.

And then there was also, I had set out, despite throwing the game, I hadn't set out for it to be a commercial venture.

At all, I didn't want to make money from it.

But it became apparent very quickly that it was so big that other people out there were going to make,

you know, they were going to take the name word or people did this, you know, they put stuff on the app store.

And it was like, I didn't want to be spending my time getting into like legal battles about this thing that, you know, I had just made it out of love.

And so selling it was just like a really clean way for me to just like walk away and throw a line under it.

It was a big decision. And I think it will be a decision that I'm always like, what if I kept on running little.

But when I bring this up my partner, Pollock, for whom I made the game, it was reminds me, you were miserable.

And I was miserable. So I'm kind of glad the way that it shook out at the end.

Did you understand the power of connection at the heart of that game?

As you said, you made it for one person somebody that you love, but this is a game that people connect through in some ways.

Did you understand that?

Yeah, really good observation. I had worked at a company called Reddit, which is a large social media site built around communities and built around humans interacting in what I think is often a very authentic way online.

I think it's something that I took from my experience there.

The way I think about word all in terms of people connecting is that really we're now in this state in the world where we can communicate with each other with your family members with your loved ones quicker and faster and at all times.

But for some reason, it's hard to say, I love you.

You know, like those big, the big words and big statements, whereas word all became the super lightweight way to use, if you send your word or score to your family in a way that kind of telling them that you love them without using the big scary words like I love you.

And I think people crave that connection.

It's a beautiful thing to have created.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Well, yeah, didn't set out to do it.

Yeah, I'm really happy that it did touch so many people in the New Yorker.

They said that the day that you sold word all to the New York Times was the last time that you actually played it. Is that true?

Yeah, that is 100% true. That was part of the, as I mentioned, drawing the line underneath it.

I was like, I just want to move on from this.

Someone else's story now. Oh, keep on doing my own thing. And I'm, yeah, I've stuck by that.

That's the same thing earlier. And it's a bit like, you know, that you have a hit.

And then what is the second album going to be an often for bands that you love?

It's that difficult second album where they try and reinvent things.

What was the time after selling word like free? Did it take you a while to get your bearings?

Yes, it definitely did. And very, you and your listeners may have realized this in a post-whittle world.

There are a bunch of companies out there and businesses who are now there are games on their website that they weren't games before.

And that everyone wants to create these kind of court, shareable, daily games for the more kind of thinky, one might say.

And so what I've actually ended up doing in that, that brief period where I kind of didn't know what to do.

People would invite me and I would go and consult with some of these companies and talk to them about what they were trying to do.

But darling, what I found is doing that work reads me creatively.

Like when by the building a prototype for somebody else or providing feedback on their game, I was no longer...

I wasn't worried about following up word all right, because I wasn't, I was just a consultant.

And that was really powerful because as a word all was the first thing I made.

And I didn't think of myself as a game developer.

And working as a consultant for a little while really helped me like do the reps and practice and feel much more confident.

So when I get to a game like Password, I think I feel much more grounded and connected to myself as a game developer.

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How would you describe what Password is?

I've been playing this for the last few days and we'll talk about my success or lack thereof.

But how would you describe what Password is?

You may be alluding to that.

Password is a challenging game, especially in better word, right?

Like, word, all you just need to know by that words.

What Password is, is there is an existing puzzle format called a cryptic crossword.

And cryptic crosswords are famously impenetrable.

But I believe under that impenetrable layer is quite a delightful puzzle format.

So the goal with Password is to try and help newer players or players who haven't played a cryptic crossword before kind of be exposed to this new puzzle format.

Can you explain, for people who don't know, what's the difference between a cryptic crossword?

They're very big family from the UK. They love their cryptics.

Can you explain the difference between a cryptic crossword and the concise crossword that I think a lot of people in North America would be familiar with?

The concise crossword, did you put it, or American style crossword?

You might have the clue got up, G-O-T space U-P.

And it's a full letter word answer.

And you play a lot of these puzzles, and you realize that the answer could be woke, W-O-K-E, or rows, R-O-S-E.

And the way you can't put one of those in, what you have to do is now, maybe you do the downs, the intersect with the answer to figure it out.

So in a cryptic crossword, the same answer could be queued as pears of rowdy seagulls got up.

And now an experienced cryptic solver can instantly look at that clue and tell you that the answer is rows.

They don't need to put it into the grid.

And so that there is something magical happening inside that clue that both tells you what you're looking for and tells you the answer.

And in this case, just for anyone listening, there's magic going on with the word pears of, means take the first two letters of rowdy seagulls, R-O-S-E, and that will give you rows, which matches the answer got up.

Did you always understand that magic, or did you find cryptics like so many of us do impenetrable?

Oh, I found them completely impenetrable. You know, it's like you do a regular crossword in the newspaper.

And next to the one with the cryptic crossword, you would look at a clue and just be like this, what are they talking about seagulls?

This makes no sense. And it was only very bizarrely I was listening to a podcast with the showrunner of Chernobyl and the last of us, this guy called Craig Mason.

And he is very passionate about puzzles and he explained how cryptics where he took like 15 minutes, explain how cryptics work.

And I was like, wow, that is a really impressive format, but it's healing behind all this complexity.

Part of the goal of password is to try and make that complexity a little less complex, a little easier to approach the password.

And maybe you can tell how we've done with that matter.

No, no, you have because it starts with the tutorial, right? If you log on the first thing that you see is a tutorial, so explain how that works.

Yeah, so there are a lot of conventions as I was alluding to earlier.

So pair of or pairs of meaning take two letters and we need to teach you those conventions.

And we do that in the form of an interactive tutorial.

Previously with cryptic crosswords, I don't actually know how you were meant to learn them.

I did it like you have to go away and read a book and then you come and play what we can do is we're doing it digitally.

Is we can kind of grip feed you these kind of conventions and we'll only teach you them when you need to know them.

So you don't get overwhelmed. Our goal there is to like gradually build you up until you're feeling confident and you can solve cryptic crosswords.

Getting into it isn't as you've said as easy as word and it says that in the game.

The subtitle is a tricky word play game mid tutorial. It says parse word is challenging.

Don't worry if it takes a while to master. So I felt better after doing that.

How much how much determination do you think players have to have to get into this game because it requires you leaning in and really focusing.

But it opens itself up once you do that. But how much determination do you think people need to crack this?

It definitely requires I think people part of word or success was that you know you could kind of.

I think as people got experience with word or they can move through it very quickly.

This is a game that requires a different level of focus like you have to sit and really think about what all the words could mean in the clue.

I think that's okay. I think encouraging people to take that time like slowing down is something that's you know we all need to be encouraged to do.

I understand that especially coming post word all and the role of these daily games it might feel a little you know.

In Congress I guess or like unexpected but I think what I have found through my own personal journey with cryptics is that the.

The puzzle format once you get over the hump of it all being confusing is really beautiful and really elegant and it's kind of an exciting way to think about language.

But I'm really glad I've got access to and the goal of the game is just to give that access to more people.

But to your point it's also something that it feels like we need right now when everything is happening at a thousand miles an hour and your phone is distracting you constantly and it's really difficult to sit down and focus and concentrate on something that demands your concentration right.

Yeah 100% I mean it's like it's almost antithetical right building such an experience on a phone but I appreciate those moments and I really encourage anyone to who tries the game to like stick with it and stick at it and be patient.

You have built these games that are are and you've hinted at this based around language and the joy and the power and the beauty of language.

And there's a quotation was watching a speech that you gave and there's a quotation that you cited that you love which is language is the very air I breathe.

What does that mean to you.

Yeah wow that's a deep cut I love it so that is a quote from a literary theorist called Terry Eagleton but in my mind my interpretation of that is that it is acknowledging that as humans we are creatures of language.

Like there is a brief period when we don't know language when we're born when we don't know words whether that's not the case but we learn words and then words dominate all of our life whether we're thinking about it or not every thought we have every feeling that we have is mediated.

Language that there's part of the fabric of who we are for better or worse part of word or success and I hope password success will be taking this tool that we have that's embedded in us and kind of shining a light on it and getting people to look at it in a way maybe they were encouraged to do in school but haven't done since but I think is yeah just really special and powerful part of being human.

And it's again goes back to that idea of the connection of these games that that you can play it individually but the real fun is to solve it and then share that with somebody else and see how they did that there's there's a connection in that in that shared power of language in some ways.

Absolutely absolutely I mean I do feel a fun we're all just want to be loved and want to be seen and if these games can give people a moment of access to that that would be amazing I mean those feel like lofty goals right but my background is in art so I feel like a lot of this is how I think about artwork as well.

You put some really nice things into the world and you made my head hurt with password as well which I like I like that my brain feels like it's being stretched and taxed and trying to figure out what these answers are Josh thank you very much for for what you've done and thanks for talking to us about it.

Thank you so much I appreciate it Josh Wardle is a creator of wordle and now he has collaborated on a new puzzle game it's called parse word you can find it online at parse word dot com that's parse like you're parsing the word p a r s e word dot com.

This has been the current podcast you can hear our show Monday to Friday on cbc radio one at 8 30 a.m. at all time zone so you can also listen online at cbc dot c a slash the current or on the cbc listen app or wherever you get your podcasts my name is Matt Calloway thanks for listening.