B B B Y Y
G G Y Y B
G G G G B
G G G G G.
If you understand and recognize this code, you know that I accomplished something somewhat mediocre. Not too shabby, I do say so myself; but I, of course, could do better. For those who are confused to find different colored squares, or feeling a bit left out, I got news for you.
There’s a new gaming craze online and it’s not another spur of teenagers finding out what Pokémon Go! is. Found on your nearest device with an Internet connection, you can play New York Times’ wonderful competition of Wordle.
Diving into the encyclopedia in your brain and digging out your various vocabulary skills in order to overpower the pertinent puzzle, it’s everything your nerd-self could dream of! Black boxes mean nothing, yellow means closer but not quite, and if you get green, you are on your way to succeeding. 30 tiles, more than 2000 possibilities; Six attempts for one five-letter word. It’s your mind against the machine.
Every 24 hours there’s a new word to solve. There’s no pressure. You can click off the site any time if it’s too challenging, if you wanna give up. But if you persevere, you can achieve a small reward of dopamine to brighten your day. Either you’re racing down the clock to keep up your winning streak or a tricky word like ‘CAULK’ might trip you and make you faceplant in dispair. (Speaking from experience.)
You don’t have to win or wallow alone, though. There are many of us “Wordlers” competing every day, striving to see who is going to get the word first and fastest. Solving it in four or five? Anyone can do that. Solving it in three, or in rare cases, two? That’s an accomplishment that you should be proud of.
There’s a strategy for every player. Some do the same starting word containing the most vowels. Some do different words in order to pick letters out of the equation. Lately, I have been using the words, ‘death’ or ‘groin’, in that order because they’re words with really common letters but they don’t have any similarities. And if all else fails, I try out ‘boobs,’ because you gotta keep an eye out for the double-letter words. Tricky bastards.
Adrenaline coursing through our veins as the tiles flip over and indicate if we are getting closer to score. Our eyes lighting up as we watch our fellow puzzlers try to succeed; Or we might cockily smirk to ourselves as pity teases fall from our crooked grins, savoring that we are, in fact, smarter than you. Don’t take our boasts seriously because it’s just simple and fun, and most if us nerds are mean-spirited.
The addictive nature of the no-strings-attached web game has it’s wicked fangs in all of us. It has taken the vast net by storm and you don’t have to look too far for some spin-off games to practice your skills and get ready for your next Wordle.
