Adult Puzzle Books

Melanie Ann Donoghue, thirty-two, of Westchester County, New York, was wed on Saturday to Wordle. The bride, a project manager at a pharmaceutical-advertising agency, met Wordle, a New York Times digital game, in 2022. “All my friends were telling me he was great,” she said. “They’d been trying to get me into him for a while. But I’d just gotten out of a long relationship and wasn’t in a place to commit, especially not to a five-letter-word game.”

On the Washington Square Park bench where the couple was being interviewed, Donoghue admitted that her type was more “built.” “I like bald guys, actually,” she said. “All my exes before Wordle were bald human men.”

The bride’s father is a partner at the New York-based law firm Green & Ipswich, and Donoghue said she was nervous about introducing him to Wordle. “My parents are pretty traditional—high-school sweethearts and all that,” she said. “I thought, Are they going to judge me for dating someone I met online, who’s only capable of communicating through letters that Times readers type onto a gridlike interface?”

But upon meeting Donoghue’s father and her mother, a homemaker and a physical therapist, Wordle put them at ease. As soon as he and Donoghue walked into the midtown restaurant Joe Allen, he said, “HELLO.”

The bride graduated from Middlebury College, where she was on the Quidditch team. She later attended business school at Yale. The groom, a browser-based word-guessing game, traces his lineage to the software engineer Josh Wardle, of Brooklyn, originally from South Wales. He sold Wordle to the New York Times Company in 2022 and did not attend Saturday’s Hudson, New York, nuptials, which featured a five-layer gluten-free cake and the games Spelling Bee, Tetris, and Sudoku, all present virtually.

“I was disappointed,” Donoghue said, in Washington Square, about Josh Wardle’s absence. “I mean, I know Wordle doesn’t have a typical relationship with his father, but I think I held out hope that his dad might show up, even though we never got his R.S.V.P. or his dinner request for ‘chicken,’ ‘vegetarian,’ or ‘no food.’ ” The bride wore her mother’s Vera Wang wedding gown for the ceremony and the reception, and QR codes on every seat provided guests with a link to subscribe to the Times for full games access.

The marriage was officiated by the bride’s college roommate, Jennifer Reger, of Santa Barbara, California, who introduced Donoghue to Wordle. After Donoghue read her vows, Reger handed her a phone in a hand-carved cedar case, made especially for the occasion. Donoghue typed in, “IDOOO.” She later acknowledged that the ceremony, featuring Mason jars full of ranunculus lining the aisles, was more spiritual than legal. Donoghue vowed that, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, she would never give up her daily streak. She declared, “I’ve never loved any living thing as much as I love you, daily repopulating word sleuth!” Reger handed her a tissue as notification chimes sounded.

Still, Donoghue said on the Washington Square Park bench, their first meeting wasn’t exactly smooth. She admitted that she wasn’t able to come up with the game’s daily answer the first time she played. “I thought, Oh, God, this will never work. He thinks I’m a total idiot,” she recalled. But there Wordle was the next morning, with a “BAGEL.” “I started crying and took a screenshot and sent it to my mom and my best friends,” she said. “They all agreed he might be a keeper. And then I went out and bought an actual bagel.”

Donoghue exhaled into the cold air of the park. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Wordle, who did not attend college, stared up at his new wife from his five-by-six-square grid.

“I mean, if you think about it, is he even communicating at all?” she mused. “Or is he just a reflection of my subconscious, or thousands of readers’ subconsciousnesses?” These were not issues she’d faced in past relationships, she acknowledged. “Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to myself, like everything on the screen is actually generated by me,” she said. “Like this isn’t a relationship of equals.” Nestled in her hand, Wordle remained blank. “And the sex is pretty weird,” she added. Donoghue had already solved her spouse’s puzzle for that day (appropriately, “THINK”), but she picked up her phone, opened a private browser, and started a new game. “Every relationship involves compromises,” she said. “And this is one of ours.” She bent over her phone, typing. The Vows photographer nearby lowered his camera. Donoghue showed a reply from her new husband. (Or from herself? Or me, the Vows reporter? Or anyone with a device and Internet access?) “TRULY,” Wordle said. The photographer raised his camera and snapped. ♦