You’re making a dubious statement: Wordle is the TV the world doesn’t want | Television

Aanyone who has watched television knows that late-night hosts have a tendency to pull interesting colors from stimuli. James Corden got it Carpool Karaoke from the act of playing music in the car. Jimmy Fallon got it Lip Sync Battle from the mouth to the music in the mirror. And now Fallon has struck again. He is making Wordle games. It is based on Wordlethe mess you used to make while sitting on the toilet.

Fallon’s production company, Electric Hot Dog, has he got free at Wordle and it will turn into a show where teams compete to solve puzzles for money. The show will film in Manchester, England, this summer and premiere on NBC next year.

On the other hand, this makes sense. Wordle is a world-renowned format, which means that TV editing has no problem explaining the rules to viewers of each episode. Wordle’s success comes down to its intuitiveness. Unless you’re red-green-skinned, Wordle is so simple that even kids can pick it up in seconds.

There is also the fact that Wordle is not real. It’s a game where you have to choose letters to fill in words, so there’s not much to separate it from Wheel of Fortune (on TV for 51 years and counting), which originated from Hangman (first mentioned in print 124 years ago). Both have proven to have exceptional longevity; maybe Wordle will, too.

However, you would be right to be skeptical of this new approach. The show’s description describes the groups of players involved, but Wordle naturally wants to be alone. It’s a game that relies on one person’s communication with their phone, including man-directed fake tricks. There are players who like to start every game with a new introduction; there are those with high-yielding startups like “Slate” or “Video” who refuse to deviate from them.

There are players who find value in racing their way to an early victory and others who enjoy solutions using the six senses. TV shows should set rules like these in stone; ignoring one method only confuses the viewer. As a grinder who likes dull movies, I doubt I’ll find much to be upset about.

The irony with this announcement is that Wordle already feels like an afterthought. It’s approaching its fifth birthday, but this time it’s gone from the top spot on Twitter to the $1 million that no one is sharing on X because using social media in 2026 feels like cleaning the gutters with your bare hands.

Maybe that’s why the game has made it to TV. Forbes has established this as a different approach and a healer caught in the throes of eternal death. It is now owned by the New York Times, and newspapers need to keep the money coming in. If the only way to save money on research is to take a twisted game and sell it to Fallon, so be it.

In fact, don’t be surprised if many books start to do the same. The Guardian has the WordFor example; we may be able to improve our financial future by buying from TV companies. Or we can start turning some of our non-news content into entertainment. Maybe we can make a Eating at every stage show, or the Jeremy-Kyle scene You be the judge list. How about a show called Liveblog This, where players have to comment on something they’ve never seen before, while typing as fast as they can as their kids are pestering them over snacks? If this is the future of newspapers, we have many options.