“Mr. Bugs Wordy Nugz.” | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Wordle is a pretty clever name for the very good word game created by Josh Wardle. But when he was first working on it in 2013, Wardle had another name in mind that isn’t quite as catchy.
“This is true: I was going to call Wordle, Mr. Bugs’ Wordy Nugz,” Wardle revealed as part of a presentation about Wordle at Figma’s Config conference on Wednesday. He also showed a slide that spelled out the name in big yellow letters. “Had I called the game Mr. Bugs, I like to think it would not have been successful.”
During the presentation, which was about the development decisions that he said “are the opposite of what you’re meant to do” but ultimately contributed to making the game a hit, Wardle also discussed the history of the game and showed…