Hot Picks: Wordle

The Pope plays it. So do Bill Gates and Paul McCartney. And Taylor Swift fans have, naturally, honoured the pop star with their own version. Last year alone, it was played more than 5 billion times worldwide. Now puzzle phenomenon Wordle is coming to TV.

“We have had much harder deals to close,” laughs Universal Television Alternative Studio (UTAS) president Toby Gorman. The company made a direct approach to The New York Times several years ago, aided by superfan Jimmy Fallon, who had become an unofficial brand ambassador through his advocation for the game on his late-night chat show.

“We said to NYT, ‘We’ve got a partnership with Jimmy. He loves this, and he would be interested in developing it with us. Could we make a three-way partnership? They jumped at the chance,” Gorman reflects.

“We were off and running but it took time, as you would expect, as we wanted to respect the IP and do it justice. So we were very thoughtful in collaboration with The New York Times and Jimmy’s company Electric Hot Dog on how you supersize this for television. Thankfully, we landed on something everyone’s excited about.”

Filmed last summer after thousands of people applied, what’s landing on NBC next year is a half-hour gameshow, hosted by NBC Today anchor Savannah Guthrie, in which teams of three compete through three rounds and the winners take on an endgame for a cash prize. Variants on the classic game include time limits and alternate guessing, whereby a team has to guess the word based on a rival team’s previous attempt.

“It’s really Wordle through and through, with five-letter words and the same yellow and green colour scheme - it’s just intensified and made much bigger for television,” says Gorman.

In bringing the format to the global market, NBC Universal Formats senior vice-president of format sales & production Hannah Mabruk is particularly excited about localising the game.

The format is offered both in its existing half-hour version and a commercial-hour game with two teams playing over further rounds – and, like The New York Times edition, in US English. The latter was tested in the US, but the faster gameplay of a shorter game felt more attuned to market sensibilities, and the show will air in double bills over an hour.

“If we do a version of it in the UK or Australia, you’ll see it with English spelling, and then you’ll start to see it in other languages, which hasn’t happened before, because everybody plays the same NYT game, so it will start to take on other identities,” Mabruk says.

What the show ultimately represents is a low-risk format, the execs say: a popular and zeitgeisty existing game that is still growing in popularity five years since its launch. Plus it comes with the cachet and heritage of The New York Times – execs from the news brand have executive producer credits on the show – and offers a clear playalong element for viewers at home.

“Though he’s not hosting, the Fallon connection means viewers know it’s going to be broad, fun, inclusive and easily accessible, just like all of his shows,” says Gorman. “There are no trivia questions, so you’re never stuck thinking, ‘I can’t engage with this’. There’s always a way for you to play along – providing you have a basic grasp of spelling five-letter words.”