Paul Dowling, Janet Fraser, Rob Doran and Ian Elliott remember playing earlier versions of the game before Wordle’s viral explosion
I was amused to read your editorial (2 February) about the internet game Wordle, created by Josh Wardle for his partner and subsequently sold to the New York Times.
I used to play this game on paper in the 1990s with my wife at the time and have included a brief discussion of it in my book Sociology as Method. I describe the game as a recontextualisation of a board game called Mastermind, which was played with coloured pegs rather than words. One player placed an arrangement of pegs hidden at one end of the board, and the other had to try to deduce the arrangement before the board was filled with their incorrect attempts.
