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The story of nerdle
how the first popular math wordle came to be
A guide from the team behind nerdle
Nerdle was the first math wordle to reach a mass audience. It launched on 20 January 2022, and within three weeks more than a million people in over 200 countries were playing it, before other math wordle games had even appeared. This is the story of how a game invented by one London family in a car became a daily habit for players around the world, a fixture in maths classrooms, and a game Bill Gates says he can’t stop thinking about.
A game invented in a traffic jam
In January 2022, Wordle was everywhere. Richard Mann, a London-based data scientist, was driving home with his 14-year-old daughter Imogen, fresh from her Sunday hockey match, when they got talking about it, and about why there wasn’t an equivalent for people who love numbers rather than words. By the time they were home, they had the rules: guess a hidden eight-character calculation in six tries, with the tiles changing colour after each guess to show how close you are.
They tried it on paper first to check that it actually worked as a puzzle. It did. Over the next day, Richard’s son Alex wrote software that generated years’ worth of daily calculations, and Richard’s lifelong friend, software developer Marcus Tettmar, built the game itself. It went live at nerdlegame.com on 20 January 2022, four days after that Sunday-afternoon conversation.
“After playing it for a while on paper, we knew it was just as fun playing on paper as it was going to be on the computer.” (Richard Mann, The Guardian)
The first popular math wordle
Nerdle wasn’t a slow burn. Within three weeks of launch it had more than a million players in over 200 countries (Metro, 8 February 2022). Word spread the way Wordle’s had (screenshots of the day’s coloured grid shared between friends, family and colleagues), except this grid was made of numbers.
The other math wordles that people now recognise came after nerdle had already taken off. Mathler and Numberle both launched in February 2022, once nerdle had shown there was an appetite for the format. There may well have been earlier, more obscure attempts at a numbers-based Wordle somewhere on the internet, but nerdle was the first to become genuinely popular, and it remains the most-played today. That’s what we mean when we call it the first popular math wordle.
- 16 Jan 2022 (a Sunday): the idea, on the North Circular
- 20 Jan 2022: nerdle launches at nerdlegame.com
- 8 Feb 2022: past a million players in 200+ countries
- Feb 2022: Mathler and Numberle launch
- 2022 onwards: the nerdle family grows to twenty games
The world noticed
For a game built in a weekend by one family, nerdle drew a remarkable amount of attention in its first months:
- Bill Gates wrote that of all the Wordle spin-offs, “the version I’ve spent the most time thinking about is Nerdle”, and posted a video of himself playing it (GatesNotes; Inc.).
- The press picked it up quickly. The Guardian, Newsweek, Metro, CNET, the BBC and national papers across the UK and US all covered nerdle in early 2022, and it has its own Wikipedia article.
- Teachers adopted it. Almost immediately, maths teachers began using nerdle as a daily warm-up, and it was featured among the digital games teachers were bringing into classrooms (Education Week; Forbes).
“Thank you for reminding me that maths isn’t scary.” (one of many messages nerdle has had from players and teachers)
From one game to a family of twenty
Classic nerdle was only the beginning. As players asked for easier versions, harder versions and new twists, the game grew into a whole family, now around twenty games in the “nerdleverse”. A few of them:
- Mini and micro nerdle: shorter, gentler entry points.
- Maxi nerdle: ten characters, brackets and exponents, for a proper workout.
- Speed nerdle: the classic game against the clock.
- Instant nerdle: solve it in a single guess.
- Bi, quad and octo nerdle: two, four or eight grids at once, the math answer to Dordle, Quordle and Octordle.
- Cross nerdle: a crossword grid made of equations.
- Nerdle Cup: a multiplayer mode where players compete head-to-head, which teachers also use for a bit of healthy competition in the classroom.
The full catalogue lives at nerdlegame.com. For a plain-English explainer of the format and how nerdle compares to the others, see what is math wordle.
Still made by the same family
More than four years on, nerdle is still independently owned and run by the people who made it (the founder has turned down offers to buy the site), and new games in the nerdleverse still tend to start as ideas over dinner. It remains free to play, with no sign-up required, the same as it was on day one.
Frequently asked questions
Was nerdle the first math wordle?
Nerdle was the first math wordle to become popular. It launched on 20 January 2022 and passed a million players within three weeks, before Mathler and Numberle launched in February 2022. There may have been earlier, obscure attempts at a numbers-based Wordle, but nerdle was the first to reach a mass audience, and is still the most-played.
Who created nerdle, and when?
Nerdle was created by Richard Mann, a London-based data scientist, with his daughter Imogen and son Alex, and built by his lifelong friend, software developer Marcus Tettmar. The idea came from a family conversation about Wordle in mid-January 2022, and the game launched on 20 January 2022.
How did nerdle start?
It started with a car conversation. Richard Mann and his daughter Imogen were discussing the Wordle craze and wondered why there wasn’t a version for people who love numbers. They worked out the rules on the journey home, tested it on paper, and four days later it was live, with Alex Mann generating the daily puzzles and Marcus Tettmar building the game.
How popular did nerdle get?
Nerdle passed a million players in over 200 countries within its first three weeks in early 2022, and has been played daily around the world ever since. It is used as a warm-up in maths classrooms internationally, and Bill Gates has named it as his favourite of the Wordle-style games.
Is nerdle still run by its founders?
Yes. Nerdle remains independently owned and run by the family that created it, and is still free to play with no sign-up. New games in the nerdleverse continue to come from the same team.