Skip to content

Founder-story archive · · 50 seconds

Josh Wardle and Wordle

Watch the original Short, follow its timestamped caption record and see the source-review scope below.

Open the original on YouTube ↗

Timestamped caption record

Automatically generated captions, reproduced as a record of the video—not as independently verified reporting. Timestamp links open the relevant point on YouTube.

Read the caption record (22 lines)
  1. 0:00He built a game as a gift for his
  2. 0:01partner. The New York Times paid seven
  3. 0:03figures for it. Josh Ward is a software
  4. 0:05engineer in Brooklyn. He makes a word
  5. 0:07game for Palak Sha who loves word
  6. 0:09puzzles. Six tries [music] to get one
  7. 0:11fiveletter word. Green means right
  8. 0:13letter, right place. Yellow means right
  9. 0:16letter, wrong place. Palak narrows
  10. 0:1812,000 words down to about 2,500. In
  11. 0:21October [music] 2021, he puts it online.
  12. 0:24No ads, no app, one puzzle a day. By
  13. 0:27November 1st, [music]
  14. 0:2890 people playing. Then players start
  15. 0:31sharing their little grids of colored
  16. 0:32squares. 300,000 players. Then 2 million
  17. 0:35in a week. [music] On January 31st,
  18. 0:382022, the New York Times buys for a
  19. 0:41[music] price in the low seven figures.
  20. 0:43A gift for one person played by
  21. 0:45millions. Follow Vibe Economies for
  22. 0:47more.
Original publication and evidence scope

Original YouTube title: “A gift for his partner. The NYT paid 7 figures.”. The original title may contain claims not confirmed by this companion.

Upload date, duration and captions were retrieved from the public YouTube record on 2026-10-16. Dates are day-level, not an asserted exact upload time. Market values, audience totals and references to “today” belong to the original publication context.

Keep exploring founder stories

Browse all new Short companions ↗ · Watch the documentaries ↗

Follow the next story.

Founder stories, documentary releases and funding research.

Sign up for the newsletter ↗