The New York Times is betting that the Wordle craze isn’t over yet. On Monday, the Times announced that it would be turning the hit mobile word game into a televised game show on NBC.
“Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie will host the affair, while The Times and “The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon will both serve as production partners. Guthrie and Fallon announced the news on the 8:00 AM broadcast of the “Today” show on Monday, where they shared that the game show had been in development for the past two-and-a-half years.
The show, which will begin airing on NBC next year, is being described as “fast-paced” and a “great family game.” That sounds a bit different from the mobile game, which often requires long periods of thought where users work through the possible choices.
This will be the first time that The Times has collaborated with a TV broadcaster for an entertainment-based program, representing yet another shift in the media company’s pivot to build a sustainable digital subscription business as print revenue continues to decline.
Wordle began its life as a popular online word puzzle game after being released in October 2021 by Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn. In January of the following year, The NYT acquired the title for its growing games business, almost immediately bringing “tens of millions” of new users to the New York Times. As of last year, NYT Games says that users played more than 11 billion puzzles across all its games over the course of the year, up from 8 billion in 2023.
NBC will start shooting episodes of the game show this summer and is currently looking for contestants.