What the sale of Wordle to The New York Times tells us about the world we live in

A young Brit working in New York comes up with a cute little puzzle game for his partner, then sells it for a seven-figure sum. It is a story with many messages, writes Hamish McRae

The popular online game Wordle needed no huge investment, indeed not really any investment at all – just one natural genius (PA)

It is a tale for our times. A young Brit working in New York comes up with a cute little puzzle game for his partner. Within a few weeks it goes global and he sells it to The New York Times for a sum “in the low seven figures”. The game of course is Wordle, and its creator Josh Wardle – a clever play.

It is a story with many messages, things that it tells us about the world we live in now. Here are my top 10.

First and most obvious, it is story about the power of social media. It was back in 1881 that Ralph Waldo Emerson made his famous observation, which in shortened form was that, if you built a better mousetrap people would beat a path to your door. Now, thanks to social media, they get there much faster. What would have taken months and years happens in seconds and minutes. Wordle succeeded because people saw it as a better mousetrap.