Wordle’s original name was Mr. Bugs’ Wordy Nugz

Waddell This is a very clever name for a very nice play on words created by Josh Wardle. But when he first looked into the project in 2013, Waddell had another, less appealing name in mind.

“It’s true: I was going to call Wardle, Mr. Bugs’ Nugz“, Waddell revealed in his speech Waddell Wednesday at Figma’s Config session. He also showed a slide with the name spelled out in large yellow letters. “If I call the game Mr. BugsI don’t think it will succeed.

During the demo, Wardle talked about development decisions that he said were “the opposite of what you wanted to do” but ultimately contributed to the game’s success. Wardle also discussed the game’s history and showed off a series of early prototypes. Waddell wanted to make a game for his partner. He likes words and games plannerso in 2013, he merged the two ideas together and began making what would become Waddell.

His first prototype was for Android, where most of the core gameplay resides: you need six guesses to guess a five-letter word. But this early version was an endless game, which meant that once you figured out a word, you could try to solve another. It also randomly picks from five-letter words, meaning you might have been trying to figure out more obscure words like “zizel” or “yrneh.”

To reduce the list of words to a set of words that “people could reasonably know,” Wardle then built another game in which you pressed a button to say whether you knew a word, didn’t know it, or might know it. This helped him reduce the word count of the list from 13,000 words to about 2,500 words.

He also continued to work on the game’s design. In some older versions included in his demo, the game had things like scores or red X marks to represent “lives.”

This all happened in 2013, when he was also considering Mr. Bugs Name. But later, Waddell said he lost interest in the game, “put it on the back burner” and didn’t touch it for six years.

In early 2020, Waddell and his partner played a lot New York Times‘Crossword puzzle and its spelling bee game. He noticed that they were all once-a-day games—only one spelling bee one day, The day’s crossword must be completed on the same day to keep the streak alive. He decided to make similar choices about what happened next Waddell.

In 2021, he constructed a version of what would become Waddell Living in his personal realm (this is where you may have played) Waddell forward New York Times completely taken over).

“This is another thing I did that you shouldn’t do. I made a website,” Waddell said. “I think a lot of the thinking around gaming is that you need an app to engage your audience. You can send them push notifications. I don’t want to do anything. It’s just [my partner] Play games with me. So making a website seemed like a no-brainer to me. He thinks being a website helps the game because you can share it with someone and they can play it.

Waddell said that for about six months, the two of them were the only ones playing the game on his site. He then shared it with his family, they shared it with their friends, and it grew from there. After seeing people posting results in emoji form, he officially added emoji results as a feature to the game in late 2021.

January 31, New York Times Announce purchased Waddell From Wardle. “I think this surprised a lot of people,” Waddell said in his speech. “For me, selling this game was a very clear decision. I didn’t want to run a games business. I was interested in creating things.

“Obviously, because Waddell I can create my own life if I want to,” Waddell continued. “But there were a lot of things I didn’t like about running the games business. It felt clear to me that it wasn’t any part of it that I wanted.

He also said that he does not want to make money through games. “It all comes back to [that] I’m developing a game for my partner. I won’t show her ads or try to upsell her a premium subscription. But even if I don’t want to make money from it WaddellI quickly realized there were other people out there trying to make money from Waddell, whether I’m involved or not. Waddell said, “Sold to New York Times This is a way to leave.

Waddell concluded by saying that if he wanted to make a viral word game, he wouldn’t have made it Waddell. “I try to make something that’s true to me. I try to build something for the people I love. And it happens that a lot of people like it.

What advice does he have for others trying to create something? “Don’t try to let Character. Make what you are passionate about meaningful to you. Then everything else will follow.