I am Not Addicted!

“You’ve got to play this game!” my husband said to me one evening.

My response was a shrug. The last time he said those words to me, the whole family played an endless puzzle game called BallZ for months.

The next day he shared his accomplishment of having figured WORDLE out in two attempts and then my oldest adult son came over for a visit and asked, “Do you play WORDLE the hard or easy way?”

Okay, my will to stay away from WORDLE failed! I wanted to know what they were talking about. Staring at thirty dark, blank tiles didn’t intimidate me at all—yes, it did!

“How do you start this game?” I asked both my husband and son, hoping they could explain it to me.

“You have six attempts to guess a five-letter word,” my husband explained.

“What!?!” I protested, then joked, “I could give you a couple four-letter words right now!”

“Chose a five-letter word, any word!” my son said.

“Like pilot?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s perfect!” he replied.

Well, say the word ‘perfect’ to me and that will inspire me to start anything!

“The feedback for each guess is in the changing tile colors after you hit the ENTER button. Green represents the right letter in the correct place. Yellow is the right letter but in the wrong place, and if it stays dark, it’s not in today’s word. Oh, and if it’s colored, it could be used twice,” he explained

Then we looked at my colored tiles, and he told me the easy way is to guess a whole new word using letters you haven’t used on the keyboard, but the hard way is using the green and yellow marked tiles as you go along.

I am not addicted at all! My husband comes in from his run almost every morning, and I greet him at the door with, “Have you played WORDLE yet!”

It’s a game of luck more than strategy, but I, myself, could argue that the other way too!

Thank you, Mr. Josh Wardle, for creating such a fun game!

Fun facts: In November 2021, only 90 people played the game. In January 2022, the New York Times purchased WORDLE. By early January 2022, over 300,000 people per day play the game!