Wordle, the game originally designed as a gift for the creator’s partner, has been a national obsession for years. Now it’s becoming a television game show.
NBC has greenlit a new series centered around the game, which will run in prime time. Today anchor (and self-confessed Wordle megafan) Savannah Guthrie will host. The show will be executive produced by Jimmy Fallon and The New York Times, which owns Wordle.
The show is scheduled to premiere in 2027 and casting is underway. If you’re interested in being a contestant on the show, you can apply at wordle.castingcrane.com. (The game will be played in teams of three, so you’ll need to find a couple of buddies or family members to join you.) Note you’ll be asked to include your Wordle stats to show your proficiency at the game.
“Wordle is one of the most successful and culturally resonant games of the past decade,” said Sharon Vuong, executive vice president of unscripted programming at NBC in a statement. “This series is a natural extension of NBC’s legacy in the game show space, and . . . we’re excited to bring a smart, joyful and distinctly NBC take to this global phenomenon.”
The format of the show will challenge players to solve five-letter word puzzles, much like the daily game, but with an added element of speed.
A long time coming
The New York Times has been developing Wordle as a game show for several years. Once the paper began working with Fallon, things began to gel, said Caitlin Roper, executive editorial director of film and tv at the Times.
“We wanted to honor the specific thrill of Wordle, the way people play and share their scores with each other, but also make something new for TV,” she said.
Wordle was created by Josh Wardle in 2021 as a game he and his partner could play together during the pandemic. He later released it on his website and it quickly went viral. The New York Times bought it in January of 2022 for an undisclosed amount in the “low seven figures.”
The game has continued to attract players since then, boosting subscriptions to both the Times and New York Times Games. To encourage that, the paper began offering access to over 1,000 past puzzles two years ago—ensuring that player efforts on those did not impact streaks or other statistics, data that regular players are quite protective about.
The NYT doesn’t give precise user numbers, but Jonathan Knight, general manager of New York Times Games, says “tens of millions” of people play each week. That has created a dedicated community around the game.
Wordle, like the Times’ other games, has a human curator and that creates a constructor/solver relationship. (The Times mandated that change in November of 2022.) There’s a component of one person trying to trick the player—and whether you succeed or fail on any particular day, it makes you want to return. At the same time, there’s a large group of players that share their triumphs and upsets—and chat daily about the puzzles on Times-run forums.
The success of Wordle has also helped boost the Times‘ other games, such as Spelling Bee, which launched online in 2018, and Pips, which was made a permanent addition to the company’s collection last year.
Wordle’s creator, meanwhile, released his latest game two months ago. Parseword is a much more challenging game. It has a more advanced ruleset and if who don’t have an especially firm grasp on the English language, you could find frustrating.
It requires you to analyze clue words, swap them out for synonyms and combine them to find two synonymous words. It’s not a game where random guesses will get you very far, but it has already amassed a dedicated group of players.