Lawrence Hall, HSG
The World Wide Wordle-Word
WORDLE has become as essential to the morning ritual as a
washup and a cup of coffee. Thought up
by Welsh software engineer Josh Wordle in 2001, in 2002 he sold the game to the
New York Times for lots and lots of money.
WORDLE is entertaining, thoughtful, and usually brief,
although you can leave it at any time and come back to it throughout the day. Many
people enjoy word games, and crosswords, scrambles, word searches, and other entertaining
mind exercises have long been a popular feature in newspapers and magazines. Although WORDLE is played on an Orwellian
telescreen via a desk computer or a MePhone and so is technically a video game,
it continues the intellectual tradition of other word games.
Playing WORDLE is so simple that even a liberal arts
major can learn it in a few minutes. The screen presents six rows of five blank
spaces. The player’s challenge is to discover, without any initial clue, the
five-letter word assigned for the game of the day. There is only one WORDLE
word around the world, making each day’s word the World Wide Word.
Thus, on the first line the player types in any common
five-letter word and then the little boxes change colors to indicate that any
given letter is (1) part of the answer and in the right place, (2) part of the
answer and not in the right place, or (2) not part of the answer.
The results of the first word, which is a guess, provide
useful information for the second word, which provides more useful information
for subsequent words.
The game begins with a guess and then become really thinky.
The official WORDLE offers only one game each day,
although there are many unofficial imitators if you want another match with
another word.
Friends often agree upon a beginning word for the next
day’s WORDLE in order to generate a friendly competition. The first competitor
to find the word of the day wins the match. For me, I choose to make my own
rule for winning – the higher number is the winning number. In using this rule
I win lots of games.
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