What can math educators learn from Wordle?
Most people would say Wordle is a word game. But we know, at its core, Wordle is a math game. It invites the player to use logic and problem solving skills most often learned and honed in math class.
As such, the Wordle phenomenon once again proves that everyone is a math person!
There’s so much math educators can learn from studying how (video) game designers tap into fundamental truths about humans. Game designers understand that all of us:
- are naturally curious
- enjoy taking (some) risks
- like tackling (reasonable) challenges
- love accomplishing something difficult
- crave social connection
Rather than stifling these human desires as often happens in a math classroom, game designers leverage them to make games inviting, fun, rewarding, and addictive.
I’ve developed a checklist of design elements that make a learning experience FEEL like playing a video game. And each item on the list can be used by math educators to make math FEEL inviting, fun, rewarding, and addictive too.
I call them Principles for Making (School) Math Irresistible!
- Agency — Games invite YOU to be the hero
Wordle invites you to take control. Too often our students expect us to be in control which allows them to be passive bystanders instead of owners of the action and the learning.
Philosopher Bernard Suits defines gameplay as “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” That’s exactly what you do when you start Wordle. - Start Ridiculously Easy – e.g. Like Level 1 of Tetris
Wordle starts incredible easy. It just invites you to play. No long list of rules to read. Just a guess a word, any word. EVERYONE can do it. - Progressive Challenge
I will tackle this one below… it’s the one item on the checklist that Wordle doesn’t really do. The game stays the same every single day. Note: the best video games get progressive more challenging. You level up, gain skills, and take one bigger challenges. - Failure is Expected
The visual design of Wordle with 6 empty rows makes it clear you aren’t supposed to get it right on the first try. You are expected to make guess, fail, and adjust. This is problem solving 101 – guess checks and revise!
A key element to making “failure” feel ok is to make sure the player always has “hope of success”.
Wordle accomplishes this by giving you 6 guesses.
Why 6 guesses? Because 6 is small enough to add tension AND large enough allow you to feel successful most of the time. When you get day’s word, you feel they satisfaction of solving the puzzle and as a result you brain gets a dopamine hit which will make you want to play again (and again). - Descriptive feedback
The game’s feedback loop gives you enough information to make another guess while hiding enough information to keep your curiosity and motivation going.
It doesn’t give you one chance and then assign a grade. Imagine, you guess “SPICY” and the game responds with “Wrong. Good news, mistakes are part of learning! Woo!” What can you do with that feedback? Does it make your next guess any better? Nope.
Descriptive feedback helps the player LEARN from mistakes.
Video games teach almost exclusively through feedback! No rule book to read before you start, no tests with teacher comments, no textbook… it’s all try, fail, get feedback, adapt, and try again. - Games Never Tell the Answer
How do you get people to keep playing and keep thinking? Never tell the answer!
Have you ever posted the day’s Wordle solution on social media? I don’t recommend it. You will anger a LOT of people. Why? Because we ALL want the thrill of solving it for ourselves.
In math class, we give away answers and take away the dopamine hit our students could have earned for themselves. If you take away the dopamine hits and no one gets addicted to math! - Make it Social
As high speed internet became widely available, video game designers realized there’s one more human desire they can tap into — our need for social connection.
We’ve graduated from single player games like pong, Tetris, and Super Mario to massive multiplayer games like World of Warcraft, Minecraft, and Fortnite. These new games allow players to tackle challenges and to communicate together.
It’s time for math to do the same… no more doing worksheets on your own. Time for shared experiences.
BONUS – Two more brilliant design choices
1. The Sharing Feature.
You can tell the world you played, whether you won or lost, and hint at your strategy WITHOUT giving away the answer.
That emoji matrix sparks curiosity!
It creates the perfect information gap in your brain. You see it a few times and your brain is dying to know what you are missing out on. What are all these people doing that I don’t know about?
How can our students share their thinking without ruining things for others?
2. One Shared Word Per Day
You can only play once a day and it’s the same word for all of us. Everyone who plays has a SHARED experience that we can talk about. What was your first word? Do you use the same one everyday? I bet your second to last word was the same as mine! This limitation enhances the social nature of the game.
We can create shared experiences for our students that they’ll remember for a long time.
Summary
Wordle checks off all but one of the boxes above and that’s a huge reason for it’s viral success.
The only missing piece is Progressive Challenge. I suspect this will be the reason we all stop playing the current version of Wordle at some point. We will settle into our routines, choose the same starting words each time and the over time the game will get stale and will fade away as a fond memory.
The good news is in math, we never run out of more challenging problems!
I encourage you to think about the “Making Math Irresistible Design Principles” and you you can start to infuse a few of them into your classroom each day. Over time, I guarantee they will make a positive difference in student attitudes and achievement.
Want to Learn More?
1) The venerable Dan Meyer has a great post about Wordle here. Check it out!
2) Watch my 18 minute TEDx talk on this exact topic.
3) For a deeper dive, you can check out my Grassroots Workshop.