{"id":2504,"date":"2023-06-29T03:15:26","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T03:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/?p=2504"},"modified":"2023-06-30T12:27:54","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T12:27:54","slug":"wordle-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wordle-woes\/","title":{"rendered":"Wordle Woes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>GROAN.<\/p>\n<p>Is it a high-potential starting word in America\u2019s favorite word game?\u00a0 Three good consonants, two frequent vowels\u2026a good opening volley this morning?<\/p>\n<p>Or, is it the SOUND that erupted painfully from my throat, scaring the dog, when I busted my Wordle streak?\u00a0 (AGAIN.)<\/p>\n<p>If you are among the millions addicted to the word game that has gripped the nation, if you constantly update your strategy or sweat over your starting word, if you are on a text thread that shares scores every morning, then you know the real answer.\u00a0 It\u2019s both.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s that?\u00a0 Not a Wordler?\u00a0 We fanatics don\u2019t JUDGE, of course, but I may quietly speculate what life is like under that rock.\u00a0 I\u2019ll even confess I started playing myself last year, after suffering the most acute case of fear-of-missing-out that ever struck.\u00a0 What on earth were all these rows of blocks on Facebook, where the devoted shared their daily scores?\u00a0 Why was everyone asking, \u201cDid you get the word today?\u201d\u00a0 I was pretty much the only person I knew who wasn\u2019t playing.\u00a0 A good pal offered to COACH this beginner, and I dove in.\u00a0 And was immediately hooked.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019ve had your eyes and ears open at all in the past year or two (this morning\u2019s Wordle is daily puzzle No. 736) in the western world, you likely know this game offers you six chances to guess a five-letter word by the process of elimination of letters.\u00a0 Sounds simple, right? You key in the letters for your GUESS and get instantaneous results. Green squares indicate correct letters in the right order, yellows are correct letters, out of order, and the remaining letters are eliminated.\u00a0 You play it on your phone, and if you sign in, it tallies your running results, totalling how many tries it takes you and how many days in a row you get it right (the streak).<\/p>\n<p>What could possibly go wrong?<\/p>\n<p>Hold my beer.\u00a0 Some of us find new ways to defeat ourselves at least once a week, if not more frequently.\u00a0 Take note here of just a few ways a Wordler can blow it.\u00a0 After 320 plays (hey!\u00a0 Is there a Wordle anniversary gift for one year?), I recommend that you don\u2019t:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Start playing when you wake up in the middle of the night and can\u2019t go back to sleep.<\/strong> Awake, maybe, but brain still fuzzy, you\u2019ll overlook blatant clues and annoy yourself so thoroughly you\u2019ll soon be even more AWAKE, even more unlikely to recapture SLEEP, and get a crappy score.\u00a0 A two-for-one nightmare.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Play the same starting word every single ding-dang day.<\/strong> There are those who SWEAR by this strategy\u2014and hey, I know one who outscores me most days\u2014but I can\u2019t stick with that.\u00a0 It left me totally BORED.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Select your first guess based on the mood of the day.<\/strong> I woke up the other morning still glowing from a wonderful gathering of loved ones the previous day, so I started with HAPPY.\u00a0 The irony was unbearable; I busted the streak painfully, even with four of the five letters by the third guess.\u00a0 Why did you WASTE an extra consonant, with those two P\u2019s, asked a kind fellow-sufferer, who probably heard my GROAN miles away at his house.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know, because I was, well, you know, HAPPY, before I played this dadgum game?\u00a0 Some have luck starting with the weather (CLOUD); he, on the other hand, often starts with terms inspired by the daily news.\u00a0 On the historic day of our former president\u2019s recent federal indictment, he started with CRIME and got the word in three tries.\u00a0 Poetic justice?\u00a0 You decide.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Forget that many words contain a letter that appears more than once<\/strong>. I made this mistake, oh, I dunno, 25 or 30 times before I finally caught on, being quick that way. Still, hope glimmers faintly on the horizon, proving that even the most bullheaded players may finally catch on.\u00a0 Today\u2019s word is RODEO, and I got it in four.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Play without your glasses because you are too lazy to get up and get them<\/strong>. Need I point out how much M looks like N when you are squinting, and so forth?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div id=\"attachment_2505\" style=\"width: 149px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2505\" class=\"wp-image-2505 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4573-139x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"139\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4573-139x300.png 139w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4573-473x1024.png 473w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4573-768x1662.png 768w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4573-710x1536.png 710w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4573-693x1500.png 693w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4573-326x705.png 326w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4573.png 828w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 139px) 100vw, 139px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2505\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">How could I miss TASTE? And the streak begins again at Zero.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2506 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4571-139x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"139\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4571-139x300.png 139w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4571-473x1024.png 473w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4571-768x1662.png 768w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4571-710x1536.png 710w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4571-693x1500.png 693w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4571-326x705.png 326w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4571.png 828w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 139px) 100vw, 139px\" \/>Enough about ways we make it harder.\u00a0 What about ethics? \u00a0(Gasp!\u00a0 Must we apply moral standards to Wordle?\u00a0 Examine your own conscience, is my advice.)<\/p>\n<p>Of all the Wordlers I know, only two have openly confessed&#8211;one of them whispering, if you can do that in a text&#8211;to consulting an outside source to improve results. One reviews a website that archives previous words; he checks it before entering a guess.\u00a0 Does that make him a CHEAT, he asked me recently?\u00a0 Reading this text, I inhaled sharply.\u00a0 Not because I was scandalized, but because I felt stupid for not knowing that the words don\u2019t repeat.\u00a0 Or that such websites exist.<\/p>\n<p>Another daily Wordler confessed to roaming the wild, forsaken deserts of Google to get the word in six tries or less\u2014checking the spelling, or asking the Almighty G if her guess is actually a word (the latter an unnecessary step, as the game rejects entries not found in the dictionary and doesn\u2019t count them as one of your six tries).<\/p>\n<p>My personal diversion from the most rigid standards of play involves asking for clues.\u00a0 One recent morning I had eliminated so many letters in four tries that I couldn\u2019t even type out a word that actually WAS a word with the letters I had left.\u00a0 After about a quarter-million attempts and three cups of coffee, I would have happily busted my streak just to finish, but, no.\u00a0 There was nothing for it but to plead for assistance.\u00a0 I texted my pal:\u00a0 Give me a hint, I begged, PRIDE and SHAME abandoned, wondering how I could possibly get on with my day, which happened to contain some actual productive objectives and commitments beyond word puzzles.\u00a0 Felt the same more than once, have you? If you\u2019re thinking of slinking to the dark side and joining me there, here\u2019s a tip:\u00a0 Ask for the first letter, if you don\u2019t have it already.\u00a0 It flips on a switch with illumination more powerful than the overhead light at the dentist\u2019s office.<\/p>\n<p>I read this week that the <em>New York Times<\/em> is introducing a new word game called \u201cConnections.\u201d\u00a0 Will it draw away the Wordle faithful, or just consume still more time in the average day for addicted puzzle players?\u00a0 \u201cThe editor of the game talks about how she makes it feel fun,\u201d begins the announcement story.\u00a0 Oh, really?\u00a0 I decline to speculate on how much fun is actually involved in my addiction to Wordle.<\/p>\n<p>Yet I stick with it.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t want for much.\u00a0 My goals are simple:\u00a0 I want to improve my stats to show more puzzles solved in THREE tries than in four.\u00a0 That gap is big, and the mountain looks high. I may never get there, but if I do, I\u2019ll be so HAPPY.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2510\" style=\"width: 149px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2510\" class=\"wp-image-2510 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4269-139x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"139\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4269-139x300.png 139w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4269-473x1024.png 473w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4269-768x1662.png 768w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4269-710x1536.png 710w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4269-693x1500.png 693w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4269-326x705.png 326w, https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/IMG_4269.png 828w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 139px) 100vw, 139px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2510\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">AGONY may be the answer, but getting it in three is still a triumph.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GROAN. Is it a high-potential starting word in America\u2019s favorite word game?\u00a0 Three good consonants, two frequent vowels\u2026a good opening volley this morning? Or, is it the SOUND that erupted painfully from my throat, scaring the dog, when I busted my Wordle streak?\u00a0 (AGAIN.) If you are among the millions addicted to the word game [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[255,254,253],"class_list":["post-2504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humor","category-uncategorized","tag-new-york-times","tag-puzzles","tag-wordle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}