Josh Wardle is a

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...

software engineer Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...

who developed the

viral Viral means "relating to viruses" (small infectious agents). Viral may also refer to: Viral behavior, or virality Memetic behavior likened that of a virus, for example: * Viral marketing, the use of existing social networks to spread a marke ...

web-based A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...

word game Word games (also called word game puzzles or word search games) are spoken, board, or video games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties. Word games are generally used as a source of entertainment, but can ad ...

Wordle ''Wordle'' is a web-based word game created and developed by Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle, and owned and published by The New York Times Company since 2022. Players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, with feedback given for ...

''.

The New York Times Company The New York Times Company is an American mass media company that publishes ''The New York Times''. Its headquarters are in Manhattan, New York City. History The company was founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones in New York City. ...

acquired ''Wordle'' from Wardle in late January 2022. Wardle lives in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, behi ...

Early life and education

Wardle is from

South Wales South Wales ( cy, De Cymru) is a loosely defined region of Wales bordered by England to the east and mid Wales to the north. Generally considered to include the historic counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, south Wales extends westwards ...

, and was brought up on an organic livestock farm in Llanddewi Rhydderch, a small village near Abergavenny. He attended university at

Royal Holloway, University of London Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public university, public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has six schools, ...

and earned a degree in Media Arts. A few years later, he moved to the United States to attend the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...

, where he earned a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts a ...

in Digital Art. He has three brothers, one of whom is

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

maker Tim Wardle, director of the 2018 film '' Three Identical Strangers''.

Career

Since December 2021, he has been a software engineer at

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county in the State of New York, ...

-based art collective MSCHF, which created

Lil Nas X Montero Lamar Hill (born April 9, 1999), known by his stage name Lil Nas X ( ), is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. He rose to prominence with the release of his country rap single " Old Town Road", which first achieved viral popul ...

's Satan Shoes.

After completing graduate school, Wardle moved to

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

, and started as an artist at

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news news aggregator, aggregation, Review site#Rating site, content rating, and Internet forum, discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") subm ...

in 2011. He later became one of Reddit's first product managers, serving as a product manager for the community engineering team. In this position, he created popular collaborative experimental games such as The Button in 2015 and

Place Place may refer to: Geography * Place (United States Census Bureau), defined as any concentration of population ** Census-designated place, a populated area lacking its own municipal government * "Place", a type of street or road name ** Ofte ...

in 2017. He left Reddit for almost two years to work as a software engineer at

Pinterest Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information (specifically "ideas") on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboa ...

, before returning to Reddit also as a software engineer.

''Wordle''

In 2013, while working at Reddit, Wardle made a prototype of word game ''

'', a play on his last name. In January 2021, he returned to his 2013 prototype to create a word game for his partner, Palak Shah. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...

, he and Shah had played many ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' games including

Spelling Bee A spelling bee is a competition in which contestants are asked to spell a broad selection of words, usually with a varying degree of difficulty. To compete, contestants must memorize the spellings of words as written in dictionaries, and recite ...

, 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 English language's 12,000 five-letter words and narrowed them down to 2,500 commonly-known words that could be used in the daily puzzle. From January to June 2021, Wardle and Shah played the game and didn't tell anyone else about it. Wardle shared the game with his family members next, before he made it widely available in October 2021 by posting it on his own website, <
powerlanguage.co.uk
/u>. ''Wordle'' had no advertisements and Wardle's goal was not to make money. Despite ''Wordle'''s success, Wardle did not want it to become his full-time job. 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. In January 2022,

announced that it had acquired ''Wordle'' "for an undisclosed price in the low-seven figures."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wardle, Josh Living people Welsh engineers Alumni of Royal Holloway, University of London University of Oregon alumni British software engineers Year of birth missing (living people) Reddit people