Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

One of the subtle ways he didn't mention is that the words seem to use medium-frequency letters, so they aren't an obvious guess, but it isn't some word with no vowels or a bunch of z's, either. I did notice that after the NYT took over the words now seem to have fewer letters, so it's more necessary to logic out which word it is if you want a good score. Previously I could figure out what most of the letters were with three words, but now I have to work at it. At least until I can come up with well-chosen words for the new regime.

I've also begun to thing of Wordle as a meme. I know virtually anything could be framed as a meme, but there's specific aspects of Wordle and its rise in popularity that make it a particularly apt description. Its viral spread was fast and resonant. It's super easy to consume. Think pieces dissecting it end up in mainstream publications. The story about its origin gets mythologized.

And, most importantly: unending riffs on the base meme. There's basically infinite Wordle clones with slightly (or very) different rules. And the shared results themselves can be riffed on as well. It's done a thing that's usually reserved for image memes: it's created a whole new language that people are using to make fun(ny) things.

It's just really interesting to see that happen with a game.

Having implemented my own 5-letter word game, I can agree that much finesse lies under the covers. Wordii is for the impatient, letting you play more often if you choose:

https://frequal.com/wordii/

The many subtleties of this genre make it a great programming challenge. I encourage developers to try making their own version. I think you'll come away with a healthy respect for Mr. Wardle.

I actually think the OP and the comments are too focused on the programmer-related aspects of this. I'll add a few things.

1. It's not trivial but it's not that hard if you have a decent vocabulary and some intuitive sense for word frequencies (and word pair frequencies) for different locations in a word. The answer list does not seem to include really hard words as naively picking all the words in the MW dictionary would be. It's a fun 10-15 minute puzzle.

2. Five letter seems like something of a sweet spot.

3. The answer word list does not appear to have a lot of plurals or common vowel endings for past tense, etc. Or obscure words.

4. It lends itself to what I'll casual cheating, i.e. there are easy ways to get some hints without giving the answers away while focusing on a strategy.

5. Basically, it's got good gameplay for a casual game. It would be easy to build something along similar lines that didn't have as fun gameplay for a casual gamer.

The code design is also very elegant in its simplicity.

You have two static lists of words in the JS code - known words, and a smaller, random pre-shuffled list of words the game will select from.

The selection is done on the client, by date, from the second list - every day at midnight (your local time!) the next word in the pre-shuffled list is selected - no hashing or randomizing or anything. No cookies are involved in making you play one game per day, no server side calls are involved in gameplay at all. And yes, this means that changing your time zone will let you play tomorrow's game, and that you can just view source to know tomorrow's word - it appears right after today's word in the code.

This is so counter to how we usually design software in so many ways, it's just delightful.