These head-spinning Wordle statistics show why the New York Times is turning the game into an NBC TV show

Your family group chat’s favorite daily word game is about to get an adaptation for the screen. In a series of press releases published this morning, The New York Times and NBC announced a new joint venture: a game show series based on Wordle, The Times’ fan-favorite word-guessing game. The show will be produced by Universal Television Alternative Studio in partnership with Electric Hot Dog (Jimmy Fallon’s production company) and The Times. Wordle’s popularity is part of a broader, successful Games operation at The Times that’s turned users’ interactions with the publication into a daily ritual. And the forthcoming TV show is just the latest evidence of how much of a cultural phenomenon the Games category has become. How NYT Games have become part of the cultural zeitgeist Wordle, a simple word game that gives users six chances to guess a five-letter word of the day, was invented in 2021 by software developer Josh Wardle. Within just a few months of its release, it already had 300,000 users. A year later, The Times swept in to acquire the game for a low-seven-figure sum. The return-on-investment for this acquisition has proven to be massive. According to Caitlin Roper, executive editorial director for film and tv at The Times, tens of millions of players engage with Wordle weekly. “Tens of millions of people play New York Times Games every single day,” Roper says. “Over half of weekly users are playing more than one puzzle every day and over a quarter are playing four or more. Our puzzles were played 11.2 billion times in 2025. The Mini Crossword was played 1.4 billion times, 1.6 billion successful Connections were made, and Strands was played 1.5 billion times.” This is the first instance of The Times associating itself with a prime-time entertainment program on a major broadcaster—and it shows how users’ ritual use of games like Wordle has become a central pillar of The Times’ business over the past several years. Access to Games is a key way that The Times