How Did Wordle Become a Pop Culture Icon?
The Sam Sanders Show
KCRW & Sam Sanders
4.9 • 707 Ratings
🗓️ 27 March 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A great piece of pop culture often includes cheating scandals, obsessed fans and some serious competition. We’re not talking about 'The Real Housewives'… But the NYT Games app!
Everdeen Mason leads the Games Team at 'The New York Times.' She tells Sam about what goes into making Wordle, Connections, The Crossword and so much more. She also breaks down the challenge of keeping millions of players satisfied. Plus, Everdeen shares what she really thinks about cheating at Wordle.
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The Sam Sanders Show is a production of KCRW and Sam Sanders Productions.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey y'all, Sam here. Thanks so much for listening to my show with KCRW. |
| 0:10.0 | All right, this episode, I made a confession about how I play Wordle. |
| 0:15.3 | And I made this confession to the person in charge of Wordle. I cheat. And that I phone a friend. |
| 0:21.7 | Sam, between you and me. |
| 0:22.9 | Yeah. |
| 0:23.2 | I love cheating. |
| 0:24.6 | Heard here first. |
| 0:25.6 | You should cheat. |
| 0:27.4 | That's the voice of Everdeen Mason. |
| 0:29.3 | She's the editorial director of games at the New York Times. |
| 0:33.5 | Everdeen runs the team that does Whartle and connections and the crosswordswords and that game with the honeybee on it that I never play but probably should. |
| 0:43.3 | I talked with Everdeen about why I and so many other people are so addicted to these games and how she and her team keep everyone generally satisfied and coming back to them every day. |
| 0:56.0 | Turns out it's pretty hard work, but also very fun. |
| 1:00.3 | I love this chat with Everdeen. |
| 1:02.2 | She is serious about games, but also she doesn't take them too seriously, which good. |
| 1:08.6 | All right, here is our chat. |
| 1:09.7 | Enjoy. |
| 1:19.4 | I have a wordal friend, my friend Jake. |
| 1:24.0 | And we see each other like every six months because L.A. |
| 1:24.3 | Yeah. |
| 1:27.8 | But we communicate every day because we share our wordle scores. Yeah. |
| 1:28.6 | And it's how we make sure the other one's alive. |
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