The Wordle of the Day Is…
Wordle’s only been out for three months, and it’s already an internet phenomenon. And guess what? Old Calvin Sharpe (which is what I call myself when I look in the mirror every morning) is firmly on the bandwagon.
For anyone even more out of the loop than Old Calvin Sharpe, Wordle is a very simple web game. You have six guesses to deduce the day’s five-letter word. If you guess a letter correctly, but it’s in the wrong space, that letter lights up yellow. If you guess a letter correctly and it’s in the right space, it lights up green.
I know. It sounds too thrilling to be true.
But the charms of Wordle lie in its simplicity. Like 2048 before it, Wordle is incredibly easy to pick up. You can send this to any English-speaking person you know and they will be able to interact with it.It has a minimalist page layout without few distractions and doesn't require quick timing or trivia knowledge. And in my experience, the words that are chosen aren’t obscure. The word of the day has never been something I didn’t already know, or even trickier words I do know, like “ennui.”
Fun fact, recently a friend joked that when I encounter a word I don’t know, it makes me furious. That’s not true, obviously. It’s just that if I don’t put the new word into my memory palace right away for safekeeping it will eat away at me forever.
The second charm of the game is that it cannot be binged. There is exactly one word per day. You can’t demand more, more, more. When you end your round, a timer starts to let you know when your word will be updated. It’s a rare web game that forces patience, which I am kind of happy to be re-learning.
The final charm I want to talk about is how perfectly made the game is to be a conversation piece. Because everyone gets the same word, everyone has the same chance each day. You can compare strategies (certain people always start with the same word, usually full of vowels, while others change it up every day) and the number of guesses you needed. The website is designed with a share function that will text a grid score to your friends without giving away the word. I imagine this is a small glimpse into what it was like when crosswords were more popular. You’d lean across the aisle to Debra in the Business Factory, or wherever you were working, and be like, “So that 16 Down, huh? That was a real headscratcher.”
Now if you’ll excuse me, I will be waiting patiently for tomorrow’s word and chasing the high that I can only imagine comes with guessing the word on your first or second try.