Josh Wardle, a Welsh software engineer, creates a web-based guessing game during the pandemic for his partner Palak Shah, who loves word games. As a play on his last name, he names it Wordle. In the game, the player has six attempts to guess a five-letter word, with feedback given for each guess in the form of colored tiles indicating when letters match or occupy the correct position.

In October 2021 Josh and Palak release the game to the rest of the world and it gains a huge amount of popularity in mid-December 2021 after Josh adds the ability for players to copy their daily results as a grid of green, yellow and black emojis and share it on Twitter.

Wordle is purchased by The New York Times in January 2022.