Josh Wardle

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Josh Wardle
Education
Place (Reddit)
Websitepowerlanguage.co.uk

Josh Wardle is a Welsh software engineer who developed the viral web-based word game Wordle. The New York Times Company acquired Wordle from Wardle in late January 2022.[1] Wardle lives in Brooklyn, New York.[2][3]

Early life and education

Wardle is from South Wales, and he was brought up on an organic livestock farm in Llanddewi Rhydderch, a small village near Abergavenny.[4][5][6][7]

He attended university at Royal Holloway, University of London and earned a degree in Media Arts.[5] A few years later, he moved to the United States to attend the University of Oregon, where he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Digital Art.[7]

He has three brothers, one of whom is documentary film maker Tim Wardle, director of the 2018 film Three Identical Strangers.[8][9]

Career

Reddit and Pinterest

After completing graduate school, Wardle moved to

Place in 2017.[2]

He left Reddit for almost two years to work as a software engineer at Pinterest, before returning to Reddit also as a software engineer.[10]

Wordle

Main article: Wordle

In 2013, while working at Reddit, Wardle made a prototype of word game Wordle, a play on his last name.[3]

In January 2021, he returned to his 2013 prototype to create a word game for his partner, Palak Shah. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he and Shah had played many New York Times games including Spelling Bee, and he wanted to make a new word game that they could play together. Shah played a vital role in the game's development before it went public. She reviewed the 12,000 five-letter words in the English language and narrowed them down to 2,500 commonly-known words that could be used in the daily puzzle.[3]

From January to June 2021, Wardle and Shah played the game in secret.[11] First, Wardle shared the game with his family members before posting it on his website Powerlanguage.co.uk and making it widely available in October 2021.[7] The game had 90 players by 1 November, within a month of Wardle making it public. One month later the game had 300,000 daily players, which rose to two million by the following week.[12] Wordle had no advertisements and Wardle's goal was not to make money. Despite Wordle's success, Wardle did not want operating the game to become his full-time job.[13]

In January 2022, The New York Times Company announced that it had acquired Wordle "for an undisclosed price in the low-seven figures."[1]

MSCHF

Since December 2021, Wardle has been a software engineer at Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF.[13][14][15]

References

  1. ^
    ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2 March 2022.
  2. ^ a b "Josh Wardle - Artist, Product Manager, Engineer". powerlanguage.co.uk. Retrieved 5 February 2022.
  3. ^
    ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 5 February 2022.
  4. ^ Hill, Jonathon (12 January 2022). "The Welsh software engineer who created Wordle for his partner". WalesOnline.
  5. ^ a b "'Incredible': from Wordle's Welsh beginnings to the New York Times". the Guardian. 1 February 2022. Retrieved 5 February 2022.
  6. ISSN 0140-0460
    . Retrieved 6 February 2022.
  7. ^ a b c "How Wordle's Creator Feels About Selling His Viral Game". Time. Retrieved 5 February 2022.
  8. ^ Carey, Matthew (8 August 2019). "'Three Identical Strangers' Director Tim Wardle On His Emmy-Nominated Doc, And Status Of Scripted Version: "It's In Development"". Deadline. Retrieved 6 February 2022.
  9. ^ Wardle, Tim (3 January 2022). "@ttwardle Fun seeing my brother's #Wordle game blow up. Ironically, he decided NOT to do all the things you're supposed to do to make a viral hit- like allowing people to play for hours or putting a hyperlink in the sharing function. It works because it's atypical". Twitter. Retrieved 6 February 2022.
  10. ^ "Josh Wardle". LinkedIn.
  11. ^ Statt, Nick. "GDC 2022: Wordle creator Josh Wardle on his game's success". Protocol. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  12. ^ "Infographic: Wordle: Much Ado About Nothing?". Statista Infographics. Retrieved 6 February 2022.
  13. ^ a b "A conversation with Josh Wardle, creator of viral hit Wordle". TechCrunch. 12 January 2022. Retrieved 5 February 2022.
  14. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 6 February 2022.
  15. ^ Yotka, Steff (2 February 2022). "Obsessed with Wordle? The Founder Now Works In Fashion—Kind Of". Vogue. Retrieved 15 February 2024.
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