| The year began with a love story. Josh Wardle’s partner was a fan of word puzzles, so he created a guessing game for the two of them and called it “Wordle,” a play on his last name. On Jan. 3, a Times article by Daniel Victor brought Wardle’s creation to the wider world. You probably know the rest. |
| The story about the origins of Wordle, and the bot that helped us master the game, are two of The Times’s most-read articles of 2022. As we have in years past, The Morning has put together a collection of the year’s most popular stories. Some of them were impossible to miss — royal funerals, wars, shootings. But others might surprise you. There are celebrity profiles, engaging mysteries, as well as stories about the body and the mind. |
| We used a few criteria to capture the breadth of what you were reading. In the most-read section, we omitted later entries that repeated a story line, as well as features like election results pages. The deep engagement list includes some of the articles with which readers spent the most time this year. |
| And we introduce a new section this year: the most gift-shared. These were the stories that readers unlocked the most this year (subscribers can share 10 links a month outside of the paywall), and the list captures an important but often overlooked part of the news — not the stories that you need to read, but those that you want others to read. |
The most read |
| World mourns Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s bastion of stability. (Sept. 8) |
| Shooting at elementary school devastates community in South Texas. (May 24) |
| Ukrainian officials report missile attacks in Kyiv. (Feb. 24) |
| Police search for gunman in attack on Brooklyn subway. (Apr. 12) |
| Flooding and power outages grow as Ian moves inland. (Sept. 28) |
| An old medicine grows new hair for pennies a day, doctors say. (Aug. 18) |
| Ivana Trump, ex-wife of Donald Trump and businesswoman, dies at 73. (July 14) |
| Thousands protest end of constitutional right to abortion. (June 24) |
| Wordle is a love story. (Jan. 3) |
| Will Smith apologizes to Chris Rock after Academy condemns his slap. (Mar. 28) | ||
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Ana Belén Pintado as a young girl.Lydia Metral for The New York Times. Source photograph from Ana Belén Pintado.
Deep engagement |
| Taken under fascism, Spain’s “stolen babies” are learning the truth. (Sept. 27) |
| The dissenters trying to save Evangelicalism from itself. (Feb. 4) |
| Ken Auletta finally wrote the Harvey Weinstein story he wanted to tell. (July 7) |
| Vanished in the Pacific. (Nov. 27) |
| The judge and the case that came back to haunt him. (Nov. 21) |
| Tom Stoppard finally looks into his shadow. (Sept. 7) |
| A messy table, a map of the world. (May 8) |
| The life and death of Daniel Auster, a son of literary Brooklyn. (July 27) |
| Willie Nelson’s long encore. (Aug. 17) |
| Whoopi Goldberg will not shut up, thank you very much. (Sept. 28) |
The most gift-shared |
| Wordlebot: Improve your Wordle strategy. |
| Billionaire no more: Patagonia founder gives away the company. (Sept. 14) |
| Can you pass the 10-second balance test? (Aug. 12) |
| At N.Y.U., students were failing organic chemistry. Who was to blame? (Oct. 3) |
| Maps: Tracking the Russian invasion of Ukraine. |
| Half the world has a clitoris. Why don’t doctors study it? (Oct. 17) |
| The root of Haiti’s misery: reparations to enslavers. (May 20) |
| A neurologist’s tips to protect your memory. (July 6) |
| The default tech settings you should turn off right away. (July 27) |
| How simple exercises may save your lower back. (Feb. 25)
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