“Parer” broke 60% of all Wordle streaks in one day

If you’ve played Wordle avidly through 2022, you may remember a particularly cursory one-day answer. Parer.

It turned out to be the most difficult word of the year, partly because of its repeated use of the ‘r’, but a particularly dizzying amount of it was revealed in yesterday’s GDC talk by Zoe Bell, Executive Producer of Games for The New York Times. streaks.

Typically, Bell shows a graph that tracks a player’s streak breaks over time, stating, “15% of people broke streaks on any given day, except for the day with ‘Pala’. Nearly 60% of people broke streaks.”

“We all moaned” when the parer came out, she joked. Because it was what she called “the language of skyscrapers.” Because you have all possible options. ”

The rest of Bell’s story was worth listening to. She said that Wordle’s “mere presence” in her portfolio of games in The New York Times has caused her active users of other games to skyrocket. The addition of a small prompt to Wordle’s end-game screen to try Spelling Bee, another word-based puzzle game, actually doubled Spelling Bee’s user base, earning a spot in the New York Times Games section. 35% of new subscribers cited Wordle as a reason. .

Bell also spoke of the Times’ “first, do no harm” approach to Wordle after purchasing it from original creator Josh Wardle, calling its viral success “a bolt of lightning in a bottle.” expressed. She also admits that she knew users would peak at some point. showed.

She also admitted to some of the Times’ mistakes. Everyone’s streak was accidentally erased before it was repaired most of the timeand Time “fetus” was the daily answeron Monday after leaked documents from the U.S. Supreme Court showed it was considering overturning the Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion rights in the country.

The Times’ general process for other games like Crosswords was to check Crosswords and Wordle and review the next three months or so. fetus was reviewed about 3 months ago. Thanks to the engineers who were working on the game, they discovered it at the last minute.

Bell said the team discussed whether to change it, talk about it or not talk about it, and decided to do both. Of all the ways it could go, she said it played “pretty well,” despite landing them a swell on the comedy show Saturday Night Live, which was laughed out loud by the talk audience. I said it was done.

Still, Bell emphasized that the team deliberately avoids talking about it, similarly reacting negatively to the team’s playfully choosing “feast” as the answer for Thanksgiving. (The Times once created a special version of the game for fans with “marriage” as the answer. I was able to propose to the partner I played with.)

You can watch the full episode online via GDC Vault on April 14, but access requires a paywall. Guide to Wordle Answers Today If you are stuck too.