On Monday 31st January, the New York Times bought Wordle, the word game which has become a huge hit around the globe. The deal, which saw the US media company take over the running of the game from creator Josh Wardle, was "for an undisclosed price in the low seven figures". How many people are playing Wordle in the UK and how many minutes are they spending each day trying to crack the puzzle?
According to latest UKOM data from Ipsos iris, the site had an average of 2.2 million daily visitors aged 15+ between 1st and 7th February 2022 – that’s around 4.4% of total daily internet users. Powerlanguage.co.uk, the game url, now features in the top 20 daily websites* for audience reach.
On average, people spend three minutes each attempting to find the five-letter word but the trickier ones in the last week such as ‘elder’ took a minute more.
The game seems more popular among women (5%) than men (3.8%) and females spent marginally longer on the site on average last week (3 min 4 secs/day) than males (2 min 53 secs/day).
Tomorrow’s Ipsos iris daily data release will also reveal if words with US spellings prove more challenging to UK internet users as many of them were not amused by the word ‘humor’ yesterday!
UKOM will keep an eye on the data and will track usage over time – it will be interesting to see if Wordle is here to stay or whether it’s a novelty which will soon pass. Watch this space.
Source: Ipsos, Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service, Daily Data, 1st-7th February 2022. * Based on the audience of the Top 20 daily websites – this does not include apps.
Base = all aged 15+ years using PC/laptop, smartphone or tablet device(s).
