Have you succumbed to Wordle? If you’re one of the uninitiated, it’s a daily word game where you have 6 chances to solve a 5-letter word.
I resisted for quite a while. I’m just naturally suspicious of trends. I don’t think this is necessarily a good or bad quality. It’s just the way I am.
Still, as my friends started posting their Wordle results for the day, I was intrigued. I used to play Words with Friends back in the day but stopped after a friend of mine and I waged a true war of attrition with each other on it for several days. Both of us agreed the experience wasn’t likely to be topped—and probably wasn’t very conducive to us being functional humans if it was to be repeated.
I finally caved on Wordle about a month ago when Julie, my boss at my part-time library job, admitted she’d started playing too. She’s also suspicious of trends, so according to my reasoning, if one trend refusenik breaks down and joins in, it’s more acceptable for another one to cave as well.
So, I gave it a try during a snowy afternoon when I had nothing better to do. I was about 3 rounds in before it dawned on me that the word in question had to have a diphthong at the beginning, and that hunch—which proved correct—had me hooked.
Since then, I’ve played every day, and truthfully, I’ve come to look forward to my daily Wordle habit. Despite my previous reservations about the game (especially when it migrated to the New York Times), I think it’s wonderful any time more people spend time thinking about words.
It’s a word game and logic puzzle all in one and even my deepest suspicions about trends can’t resist that. In the name of corrupting other people suspicious of Wordle, Julie and I dragged Jen, another trend-resistant library coworker, down the rabbit hole with us because when she heard the two of us had started, well, she was intrigued.
I usually play right at midnight when the new puzzle resets itself. Though a part of me wishes I could play more than once a day, some of the appeal is exactly that limitation.
My go-to strategy—honed from years of watching Wheel of Fortune—is to knock as many vowels out of the way as possible. I try to get all of them within the first two rounds. The internet informs me a lot of people prefer a consonant-first strategy and I completely understand the logic behind that, but my mind doesn’t work that way.
I don’t have a default starter word, though I’ve been quite impressed with my friend Kelsey’s go-to of OUIJA. So many vowels! But once I’ve addressed the vowels, I then try to use process of elimination on getting them into the right order and rounding out the consonants.
It’s worked out well for me. I’ve usually solved it in about 5 minutes, but recently, I did spend about 30 trying to decipher the latest one. So far, I’ve solved all but two. [I hope this declaration doesn’t jinx me.] SKILL was one of the ones that brought me down. The irony is not lost on me.
So, are you a Wordle fan or not? What’s your Wordle strategy?
