I think three parts to its popularity: 1) sharable, 2) streaks, 3) free.
1) I think this is the main reason why the game spread so rapidly. You get a neat little emoji grid every day that you can immediately compare against friends and strangers.
2) Only being able to play one word per day (quick to learn, long time to master) is really good at retaining a daily active user-base.
3) There are no ads, and most importantly, no account creation required. You just visit the webpage on the same device you first did and all the stats are in `localStorage`. NYT is notorious for not being able to do anything without an account so I don't think as many users will follow as they hope.
1) I think this is the main reason why the game spread so rapidly. You get a neat little emoji grid every day that you can immediately compare against friends and strangers.
2) Only being able to play one word per day (quick to learn, long time to master) is really good at retaining a daily active user-base.
3) There are no ads, and most importantly, no account creation required. You just visit the webpage on the same device you first did and all the stats are in `localStorage`. NYT is notorious for not being able to do anything without an account so I don't think as many users will follow as they hope.