If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably noticed people talk about Wordle all over Twitter, Instagram and even this newspaper.
In case you don’t know what Wordle is, Wordle is a daily word game where players have six chances to guess the five-lettered word of the day. Each guess gives players clues on how close they are to the Wordle: A green highlight means that they’ve found the exact placement of a letter, while a yellow highlight means that the letter guessed is somewhere else in that word.
As an English major who has practiced plenty with words and phonemes, I thought this light brain teaser would be a relaxing way to start my day.
And then I lost two days in a row.
Unable to handle the shame and disappointment that followed, I spent a couple days reaching out, researching and theory-crafting the best ways to beat Wordle on a consistent basis.
That’s originally what this article was going to be about. But I discovered that winning at Wordle isn’t that complicated. Wordle is simply about picking great starter words and eliminating letters with each guess. The wrong way to play Wordle is to feed your pride, try to figure out the Wordle in three guesses, have that backfire and throw away your pride forever.
More importantly, I discovered that Wordle isn’t about winning at all. Wordle is about sharing your daily scores with a friend you haven’t seen in almost a decade, about burning the first 10 minutes of your work meeting to discuss starter words and about laughing at an English major who is surprisingly not that good at this game. As cliche as it may sound, Wordle is less about winning and more about the friends we make along the way.
And, if you think I’m joking, then just ask Josh Wardle, the creator of Wordle who originally developed the game to play with his partner.
So, instead of breaking down how exactly to win at Wordle, I wanted to share some of the best responses I received when asking how to beat this simple and infuriating game.
“Cheat,” said Jamie Henderson, senior English major. Henderson later asserted that she was, in fact, joking.
“I let the universe tell me my first word and then try to eliminate the letters before giving a good guess,” said Amy Van Arsdell, sophomore history major. “I love [Wordle] because it’s a fun way to stay connected to my brother in the U.S. while I’m doing ACA in Spain. He’s beating me, though.”
“I usually stay up until 12 and do it before I sleep,” said Josh Kim, senior biochemistry major. “It’s become a daily ritual, and I keep playing to continue my streak.”
“Just vibes on the first and second [guess], then activate brain powers, and panic through the rest,” said Abby Hansen, alumni and Writing Center tutor. “I treat it [like] I’m cracking a code to save the word, but to be honest that makes it more fun.”
