A few close calls almost broke the chain
When I first heard about Wordle, the free and pure daily word-guessing game from Josh Wardle, I enjoyed it enough to write an article about it on this site. But I thought that would probably be the end of it. I figured it’d come and go for a lot of us — that our attention would shift to the next collective time-waster as new players stepped up to see what the fuss was about. The self-sustaining cycle would continue… for a while at least.
While I’m sure that’s true for plenty of people, I’m not one of them. I’m ~hooked~.
- Friends, family, loved ones? Still obsessed.
- Tweeters? Still tweeting.
- Villains? Still trying to spoil the fun.
A month after discovering Wordle, I am still very much invested in this nifty little browser-based puzzle game. Part of that is on the aforementioned support system, whose members can’t help but compare and contrast our different word-deducing habits, and part of that is on the scorecard. Every day, the stakes feel a little higher. It’s like how your Report Card in elementary school felt like this mystical, earth-shatteringly serious file.
Who’s going to be the last one standing in my Wordle group with a streak? Almost certainly not me. But I’m fighting for it.
I can’t keep getting away with this
This is what happens when intuition and ill-advised wild-card guesses collide.
I’ve had three truly close calls so far with last-ditch, exasperated guesses, including a recent near-botch with “KNOLL.” For now, though, I’m somehow hanging in there.
Admittedly, I don’t play Wordle on Hard mode — the laxer default rules are fine, thanks — and I also don’t try and min-max it to death. Nothing against the folks who have whittled down a shortlist of the most effective first guesses, of course. It’s just not me!
In this laid-back approach, I end up guessing whatever feels right at the moment, often put myself into an avoidable jam, then struggle for an embarrassingly long time to work my way back out. It’s not everyone’s playstyle, but it suits me; it keeps Wordle fresh.
Where are you at? Is your streak stable, or did you miss a day? What word did you in?
If you’ve held off until now, or you’re just hearing about it, give Wordle a try since it’s good, it’s free, and it’s playable directly in your desktop or mobile browser without needing to download an app or create an account or even suffer through ads. I know it’s probably getting old to some, but I cherish it. And I hope to keep cherishing it all year long.
