NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday chose the newest craze on social media, Wordle, to take a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government.
Wordle is an online word game and gives a player six chances to guess the day’s secret word, which has five letters. The aim is to figure out the secret word with the fewest guesses. If a player successfully guesses the word, he is prompted to post his/her score on social media along with the number of tries.
On Twitter, Gandhi used the format of the game but changed the letters to reflect Congress’s allegations against the prime minister. The photograph shared by the leader contained words like ‘Jhumla’ (scam), ‘Taxes’, ‘snoop’, ‘photo op’, in an obvious attack on the ruling party.
He also wrote ‘056’, a reference to a comment made by PM Modi in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, where he referred to his 56-inch chest -- to reiterate his strongman image.
{{/usCountry}}He also wrote ‘056’, a reference to a comment made by PM Modi in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, where he referred to his 56-inch chest -- to reiterate his strongman image.
{{/usCountry}}With Covid-19 cases raging across the world and several countries imposing lockdowns, many have got hooked to this online, free game that requires one to guess a five-letter word, every day. Players in India say they are also glued to it, and some have even started competing with their friends and colleagues while comparing the daily score.
The game was created by former Reddit software engineer Josh Wardle, originally for his partner Palak Shah, as reported by NPR. The game can only be played on its official website and does not have an official mobile app. However, several developers have created identical app versions to cash in on surging demand for the game, with unsuspecting users driving up downloads of the clone apps.
The puzzle’s rise has been meteoric: according to The New York Times, 90 people played on November 1. Two months later, on January 2, more than 300,000 tackled the challenge. The Guardian put the daily player count last weekend at two million, and rising, according to news agency AFP.