Hasbro, NY Times announces board game for popular online game 'Wordle'

WASHINGTON: Hasbro Inc, the company that is responsible for creating some of the best board games in the world including Scrabble, Monopoly and Clue, is in the process of developing a new game that is based on the wildly popular digital word-guessing game, Wordle. Hasbro Inc. and The New York Times, which bought Wordle earlier this year, announced on Thursday that Wordle: The Party Game is already open for preorders and will be made available in North America in October.

"Since Wordle burst onto the scene, it's undoubtedly been a staple in social and pop culture vocabulary," Adam Biehl, Pawtucket, Rhode Island-based Hasbro's general manager of gaming said in a statement. "We're beyond thrilled to work with New York Times Games to bring our gaming worlds together and extend Wordle in new ways."

The online free version is one where players will get six chances to guess a five-letter word using only the clues of the previous guesses.

The appeal is the simplicity of its gameplay. The game starts with the player typing in a five-letter word. The right letter in the right place will turn a square green. If it turns yellow, the letter is in the word, but in the wrong place. Gray squares mean letters are not in that word.

The downside is that it can only be played once per day. The board game will not have that drawback and players can play against others several times. A random word is chosen by a player, and others will try and guess it.

Hasbro and New York Times Games said that there will be different opinions for play including classic, fast, timed, or teams, Associated Press reported.

Originally created by Josh Wardle, a software engineer from Brooklyn for his partner, it was later released to the public in October. Only 90 people played it on November 1st. Within two months, that number grew to 300,000 as the addictive phenomenon spread through social media.

In January, the New York Times Games announced the purchase of the game for an undisclosed amount described as "low seven figures," which now has millions of daily players.

"Wordle truly brought us all together and that's what makes it so special," said Jonathan Knight, head of Games for The New York Times