It’s incredible to me that one person has had such a large impact on internet pop culture. I wonder how many distinct individuals have been regular users of his games.

I think it is a one-hit wonder. Obviously the button and place were popular games, but they were instantly shown to a billion people when launched. They could have launched tic-tac-toe and it would have been popular.

I don't think that's true. It's difficult to convey the amount of overnight culture that came from "the button". It wasn't a game for many people, it was an absolute obsession for months to hundreds of thousands of people.

It's very easy to discount if you weren't there, fair enough.

Thank you for bringing this up; I think a lot of programmers might look at Wordless, see a seven-figure payout, and beat themselves up for not managing to do the same when their experience level is vastly different.

Yeah, there's a ton of barely noticeable nuance to Wordle's design that makes it so popular. The way sharing was set up was brilliant, and the "everyone gets the same word" design feels super limiting and strange, but you can instantly see the tie back to his earlier projects where that makes it more of an experience/event than a simple word game. Things like Place and The Button having hard set interaction limits changes what they are and how people play them.

The usability experience is absolutely top notch as well, I can't speak to any input or interaction method that feels natural that Wordle doesn't seem to handle effortlessly.

It's a simple game, but it's a game tuned to the absolute perfection of it's craft.