Wordle: Magic of words offer relief to Covid grief
Hyderabad: The last ten days on Twitter have been abuzz with the name Wordle as people share posts of their successes and failures while others comment why a particular combination works and another doesn’t. Let me introduce you to Wordle, a game imagined by a software engineer named Josh Wardle in 2013 who chose the […]
Published Date - 22 January 2022, 06:56 PM
Hyderabad: The last ten days on Twitter have been abuzz with the name Wordle as people share posts of their successes and failures while others comment why a particular combination works and another doesn’t. Let me introduce you to Wordle, a game imagined by a software engineer named Josh Wardle in 2013 who chose the ongoing pandemic as the right time to showcase it to the world.
Hosted by powerlanguage.co.uk Wordle is a simple word game that gives you six attempts to guess a five-letter word, and with each guess it tells you what letters make the cut and clues to their positioning in the solution.
Over the last week, I have guessed over 6 words and it has been a mix bag so far. Some I got by turn three and some took me longer. Friday’s solution took me all the way to turn six as I guessed taffy and tawny before the right one. It has been a a very smooth experience so far, so much so, that like most players I have stopped wondering about the quality of Wordle as a game but have begun to use it as a window to try and understand the creator’s way of thinking and framing the puzzles.
What stands out for me so far is the simplicity of the game, Wordle appears as one singular puzzle in a 24-hour period at 12 am IST or 6.30 pm GMT on a browser window with no ads and is not available as an app. It is available, accessible and requires you to dive in right away. The interface – the closest you can get to arranging tiles on a conventional scrabble board, and its execution without the superfluous. You open, you solve, you move on and return the next day an act like a workout at the gym or like picking up coffee every morning (or whatever, how would I know? I am a Horlicks guy). I have discussed the game amongst friends, teachers, mentors, and colleagues and they have all been hooked onto it as we share experiences of how it works day after day.
In terms of gameplay, I am now sharing a bit of strategy that works for me, in the first guess maximize as many of the vowels as possible, adieu for example has become a great first word of choice amongst players in my circle. The next two turns you play the left-over vowels and the most common consonants like s, r, t, p and from there on you finetune the solution by making sure you keep the letter positions and rejected letters in mind. I am not dwelling into more here but this is a great system that works for me, but you do you and make sure to have as much fun as possible.
Lastly, on the 12th that is last Thursday the solution was “favour” a word that didn’t seem right because a game designed by a person of Welsh origin and hosted by a site from the UK should have spelt it the British way, right? But no, it had to be a five-letter word and I felt so cheated as at that instant I felt the British pride for their version of English fade.
Over the years I have been mocked several times for my British pronunciation of words like buffet and castle but here I was being mocked by a game that was supposed to benefit my colonial understanding of English. Wasn’t that supposed to be one of the small benefits of centuries of colonial rule, and growing up in a society that celebrates convent education? Despite the gaffe of favor and favour, there have been not many games in recent memory that have caused me to complain. Wordle accomplished that.
My verdict, English accuracy: utterly disappointed, as a word game: simply wonderful! Make sure to give it a try.
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