I was amused to read your editorial (2 February) about the internet game Wordle, created by Josh Wardle for his partner and subsequently sold to the New York Times.
I used to play this game on paper in the 1990s with my wife at the time and have included a brief discussion of it in my book Sociology as Method. I describe the game as a recontextualisation of a board game called Mastermind, which was played with coloured pegs rather than words. One player placed an arrangement of pegs hidden at one end of the board, and the other had to try to deduce the arrangement before the board was filled with their incorrect attempts.
Some readers may remember this game; there was also an online version of it.
Prof Paul Dowling
Department of Culture, Communication and Media, UCL Institute of Education
• Re the coverage of the purchase of Wordle, the game has been around since 1975, albeit in analogue form. My set of Word Mastermind in its battered box has players inserting letter tiles in four, rather than five, holes as they try to guess the word. Different coloured pegs indicate a correct letter in the right or wrong place. It allows up to 10 tries a game. You can play for free as many times a day as you like, too. But the main advantage is that it has to be played from a static position, so there is no chance of colliding with someone playing it on their phone while walking along.
Janet Fraser
Twickenham, London
• The invention of the extremely popular Wordle is not a new creation except as an online app-based version. My friends and I played the same game on paper or in our heads and called it Five-letter Word Mastermind. We would play several words at the same time and have as many guesses as needed, with the winner having the fewest tries. I remember it helped keep us awake on long night shifts at Frenchay hospital 50 years ago.
Rob Doran
Canon Pyon, Herefordshire
• Around 55 years ago we were playing a very similar game in pairs against each other during a craze in our office. It has only been turned into an online competition.
Ian Elliott
Hathersage, Derbyshire
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