Wordle as a Teaching Tool

Abstract

Wordle, a game in which a player has six chances to find a five-letter word, has become quite popular. In this paper, we present four activities that are based on Wordle and are designed to help students advance their knowledge and skill of a particular concept. Some of the activities could be used for beginning students and some activities could be used for more advanced students. The activities are designed to promote mathematical engagement and interest and can be used individually, or collectively, to fit the specific needs of the intended audience. The first two activities enhance students' knowledge of combinatorics and probability when letter words are chosen at random. In another activity, individual and pairs of letter counts from the list of possible Wordle words are presented in graphical format. More advanced students can replicate these graphs using a computer program, while other students can simply use the graphs that are included. In the fourth activity, students have the opportunity to play Wordle and develop strategies to minimize the number of steps required to solve a particular puzzle. Classroom experience is included and student responses to the activities are presented.