Wordle’s official board game gives me the fear

My family is obsessed with Wordle. Their love for the five-letter-word guessing game has become so strong that we’ve had to create a separate family Whatsapp group for it. Now, Wordle owner The New York Times has partnered with Hasbro to make it into a real world tabletop game – and I think I might have excuse myself from every family gathering going forward, because I know that someone’s inevitably going to buy this for someone’s Christmas or birthday present in the future, and it’s going to be all they ever want to do and talk about . Help.

At the moment, I think I’m safe. “Wordle: The Party Game”, as it’s going to be called, is currently only scheduled to launch in North America so far, with a release date of October 1st. Priced at $20, pre-orders are open now if you feel so inclined. Here’s hoping the extra $10 shipping fee to get it to the UK is enough to dissuade my siblings from importing it.

Like the online version of Wordle, the board game will see players guessing the letters of a five-letter word set by a member of your party. There are dozens of little yellow and green squares for the host to dole out for correct guesses, and each round ends after six tries, or sooner if someone gets the right answer. All the boards are dry-erase, too, so you can use them multiple times, and an official word list will be included too – presumably reusing lots of past Wordle answers compiled by The New York Times to help give people ideas.

However, there’s also going to be a team version, which will see two people playing on a single board against another pair of players, guessing the word picked by their opponents.

“We know people love to have game night and have their friends over to play games. They’re social experiences, so it’s a way to share, connect and create memories,” Hasbro’s general manager Adam Biehl told CNN.

Wordle exploded in popularity about six months ago, spawning dozens of spin-offs and different variants as developers scrambled to ride the coat tails of this humble little puzzle game. It was so popular, in fact, that it was gobbled up by The New York Times in February for a seven-figure sum. It’s still free to play at the moment, but many of the NYT’s other games sit behind a paywall right now. It’s possible Wordle may well join them at some point in the future, but so far, it’s still available for everyone to enjoy at no extra cost.

Should Wordle: The Party Game ever come to the UK, this is definitely going to fall in to the same category as our Star Wars Monopoly set. Every Christmas one of my brothers insists we get it out, and every Christmas someone (usually me, truth be told) gets stressed out because they inevitably fall into a massive debt spiral about 30 minutes in. At least our guides crew have some great words Starting words to help me out in this case, but please, Hasbro. Keep this thing state side. For all our sakes.