Hundreds of MSD students are participating in the newest addicting trend一“Wordle.” While being around for months, it’s a recent trend dominating social media pages. Thousands of users tweeted their results for the day with gray, yellow and green boxes. Jimmy Fallon tweeted about how he was “addicted” to the game.

The game is simple. It’s a daily word game that is solely browser-based, founded by Josh Wordle for his wife, who loves word games. Every 24 hours, there is a new word of the day. Users have six tries to guess the five-letter word of the day. After each guess, the letters will turn different colors. If the letter is gray, it means the letter is not in the word in any spot. Yellow means the letter is in the word, but not in that particular spot. Green means the letter is in the word and in that spot.

“It was fun,” freshman Taylor Le said. “[It] took me a second to understand the rules, but when I got it, I understood how this game got popular.”

Different users take different strategies for the game. Some use up all five spots for burner words to gather what letters and their placement in the word, while others attempt to guess the word in three or less tries. Some users start with words that have common placement, others change them based on the day.

Articles online offer a variety of suggestions, including “do not reuse your gray letters” and reminders to users that letters can appear twice, with past words being “chill” and “ferry.”

Programmers, coders and game designers analyzed the game to figure out the ideal starting word. Many suggest using words such as “later,” “roate,” “ideal,” “arose,” “soare” or “adieu.”

“I always use a word with lots of vowels,” freshman Charlotte James said. “I change it everyday, but usually something with ‘e’ and ‘a.’”

Despite its simplicity, many find the game “addicting” or “compelling.” Over 300,000 people play Wordle daily. There’s several contributing factors that compel users to continue playing.

The game is “high-stakes” because players only get one shot. If players do not guess the word in the six tries they’re allotted, their streak ends and they have to wait until tomorrow to begin to rebuild their streak.

Everyone plays the same puzzle, which lets players engage in conversations with their friends about the game. They can message a friend and say “Did you guess the word correctly today?” or “Today’s was hard!” Twitter users can tweet “Did anyone guess the word correctly today?” or “Today’s word was weird!”

In connection to the conversations allowed, Wordle makes it simple to share results. Once the puzzle is completed, successfully or unsuccessfully, there is a share button that pops up. Users can tweet the image, which appears as gray, yellow and green box emojis in the formation of their guesses, along with the number of the puzzle and how many tries it took the player.

The popularity and simplicity of Wordle has led to several spinoffs of the game. A fan of Wordle created an archive of old words, so new players can play Wordle all day. “Hello Wordl” is another spinoff with unlimited words and players can adjust the number of letters in the word, all the way up to 11. “Lewdle” contains “rude” words, such as profanity, vulgarity and obscenity. However, Lewdle does not use slurs. A Swiftie with a Taylor Swift podcast created “Taylordle,” a Wordle with only Taylor Swift-related words.

Wordle took over social media and the world overnight, and while many fear its recent new ownership by the New York Times, Wordle seems like it will be a part of people’s daily routine for a long time.