Tag Archives: Jimmy Fallon

NBC’s Wordle Game Show is Looking for Contestants!

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Wordle is a household name.

There have been board game adaptations, dozens of variations (including four games at a time, eight games at a time, and Absurdle, where the word changes based on your early guesses).

After five years of public gameplay and hundreds upon hundreds of five-letter words, NBC is bringing the puzzle to television in a team game-show format.

From their official casting announcement:

We are casting teams of THREE PLAYERS to compete for a chance to win a HUGE CASH PRIZE!

TEAMS CAN BE MADE UP OF FRIENDS, FAMILY, SIGNIFICANT OTHERS, CO-WORKERS, ETC.

Selected teams will head to Europe to play the game over a 1-2 week period within July 20 – August 1, 2026 (dates subject to change). Must be 21+.

Was “Wordwide” intentional wordplay or a lucky accident?

They’ve already announced a host, Today Show co-host Savannah Guthrie, who is an avid Wordle player, and the show is being produced by Jimmy Fallon’s production company Electric Hot Dog, alongside Universal Television Alternative Studio and, of course, The New York Times.

Naturally, savvy game show fans are already drawing parallels between this proposed Wordle game show and Lingo, a word-guessing game show from 1987-1988. The game was basically Wordle, but each word you spelled gave you chances to draw bingo balls in order to fill out a bingo card.

OLD LINGO? Twenty years ago is OLD?! Man, the Internet is humbling…

Lingo had a very successful revival on the Game Show Network from 2002 to 2007, hosted by Chuck Woolery and lasting 345 episodes! It was briefly revived again in 2011 with Bill Engvall as host, and once more in 2023 with RuPaul as host, trying to capitalize on Wordle’s popularity.

There are currently versions of Lingo in Greece, Turkey, and the UK, and previous versions in another dozen or so countries.

But game shows are constantly being rebooted, adapted, and resurrected for our entertainment, so I’m not surprised to see Lingo return under its more famous sibling moniker.

The real question is… who is gonna pick the words for the show? Because Tracy Bennett has been doing a heck of a job for The New York Times for years now.

What do you think, fellow puzzlers? Will you be accepting the team challenge of NBC’s Wordle? Do you think this concept has staying power? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Bad Board Games edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, I’d like to return to the subject of board games.

Now, for the most part, I try to keep the spirit of blog posts here positive. We share puzzle news, explore history, and talk about puzzles and games we enjoy. It’s more fun to write about things that excite me and that I enjoy about puzzles and games than to wallow or sling mud.

That being said, sometimes you can’t help but poke a little fun at some of the misfires in the board game industry. Jimmy Fallon, host of The Tonight Show, is apparently a big board game aficionado — though, according to the games he lists, he hasn’t checked out a new game from the last 25 years or so — and he’s seen his share of stinkers.

Recently, he featured four games on The Tonight Show that he thinks deserve a thumbs-down. Check it out, courtesy of a link provided to me by friend of the blog and Penny/Dell Puzzles social media guru Darcy Bearman:

Honestly, considering some of the games and stunts he plays with celebrities, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Jimmy play a round of Ring Around the Nosey with a Victoria’s Secret model or the latest winner of Dancing with the Stars.

What board games do you think deserve to be featured in a future edition of this segment, fellow puzzlers? I know Monopoly takes its fair share of abuse from board game fans these days, but there must be more worthy contenders out there. I’d love to hear from you!

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