2022: Wordle Takes Over The Internet

In its short lifespan, Wordle has already made the tricky transition from a cult phenomenon to an established part of our daily lives.

Created by a software engineer in Brooklyn for his partner in October 2021, the online word puzzle game became a global overnight success.

But the game’s swift pop-culture ascendancy, which led to it getting acquired by the New York Times for upward of $1 million in January, isn’t unprecedented. In fact, 100 years before Wordle entered the scene, an even bigger word puzzle craze swept the nation: the “cross-word mania” of the 1920s.