Defend The Indefensible: Wordle

This garbage psy-op robot nonsense has taken over a significant percentage of my social media feeds. What's worse, its adherents seem to be extremely defensive about any and all criticism of their willful perversion of the signal-to-noise ratio. A pox on all of thee.

https://josiegirlblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-06-at-2.07.26-PM-1024x1010.jpg

Octordle is better

oh yes, I forgot to rant about the tiresome and inevitable copycat spinoffs that will continue for the rest of time

I think its neat that it's a one-a-day thing and everyone gets the same word. the communal aspect of that is cool & I like that it only asks for a couple minutes of your day. watching Twitter bitch about a word like TACIT is kinda fun

Tbh, I don't see it in my Twitter feed as much as I did a month ago, though I'm still playing and enjoying it. I usually do it when I'm making coffee in the morning, and I agree that it's nice to have a little 5-minute diversion once a day.

like I'm actually kind of charmed that there's a popular game that does NOT encourage people to play it as much as possible. makes me feel like someone actually respects my time

Agree with these last few, although these days I kind of enjoy the quordle challenge more. Someone I know described wordle itself as an amuse-bouche which I thought was fair and apt.

I stopped posting my 🖼 on social media a while back, probably only did it a few times anyway.

love wordle and only see it on socials a little any more.

Yeah, I've only ever shared a result a few times, but wgaf if people want to do it every day. It's better than seeing corny self affirmation graphics and other people's horoscope memes.

I play and enjoy, wouldn’t really think to post results on socials but I have a few Wordle pals with whom it is fun to compare experiences - feel a small dose of wholesome fun is allowed IMO

Was surprised when it was sold to the NYT for a “low six figure sum”, felt it was probably worth quite a bit more

I play and enjoy, wouldn’t really think to post results on socials but I have a few Wordle pals with whom it is fun to compare experiences - feel a small dose of wholesome fun is allowed IMO

Was surprised when it was sold to the NYT for a “low six figure sum”, felt it was probably worth quite a bit more

It’s an easy & fun puzzle to do over a cup of tea

The once-a-day release and the social aspect (plus the visual aspect of the squares &c) is the inspired part for sure, it’s been said enough times but during the pandemic these low-stakes communal experiences are particularly appreciated. Same goes for that spelling bee thing that I don’t play because not free (also I played a trial version and it said LING is not a word which anyone who’s ever done a crossword might have something to say about)

OP needs to get some perspective

what's psy op abt it?

i think its ok. what wins said about spelling bee, the creator of that needs a heavy punishment beating. most days

i will never take time from my busy important life to play a daily word game but i greatly like the way wordle's soothing untranslateable abstract pattern pops up to interrupt the relentless harshness of my war-torn TL its like visual ASMR from donald judd

Once I realized there was no skill involved, and heaps of luck, and few don't eventually guess the word, I quickly stopped playing. But I concede there's probably something soothing to that for some folks. Not everything has to be doing the Times crossword in pen with the timer going.

lest we forget (images lost to time):
mastermind, the game

^pvmic

played Mastermind a lot as a kid

anyway was coming here to agree with you all that Wordle hate is futile (and passe) in March 2022 but I did just see #WordleTheAlbum trending on UK Twitter so

Yes, let's reserve our hate for the Wordle Movie (coming spring 2024)

Sounds like a Pokemon character already.

I love Quordle and play it every day. So does my bf and my mom. Idk why anybody wouldn’t enjoy it except that they find people sharing their results tiresome, but it was fun the other day to scratch my head at JUNTO and Google “junto” and get back all these people on Twitter screaming “wtf is a JUNTO?!”

^seconded

It seems like the bulk of people came to Wordle very late in its run (the first time I remember seeing results shared en masse was somewhere in the 190s), so I have to imagine many of the most familiar words had already dropped off the list before people noticed it. I suspect it will be a very long time before we see a word repeated, but ones in common usage will be fewer and farther between until then.

I do find the copycats thing annoying as they spring up so quickly it feels cynical and like skilled people not busy enough in their job are just hanging around waiting for someone else to prove something is worth their precious time and effort. Ah wait this has kinda been my life MO minus the actual success and now I am too busy.

This garbage psy-op robot nonsense

look dude I understand not wanting to have any part of the latest trend but you clearly don't even understand what Wordle is

to be clear i'm not a Wordle "adherent" and i don't post about Wordle on social media - but it's really actually harmless

@ johnny fever are you suggesting that ..... we are running out of words after 200 games?

.....

Nope, I'm just guessing that Wardle, when developing the game, probably used a lot of commonly used words first before poring over his dictionary for stretching out the game's lifespan. NYT is still following the original game's numbering and wordlist afaik, so the words are only going to get more obscure before it circles around and gets easy again.

so its creator is called Wardle ffs

I feel this fact will have been discussed to death on corners of the web I've thankfully not encountered yet

some words that have already appeared as answers: rebut, humph, whelp, wooer, agora (last one removed by nyt). i'm guessing he randomised the list (of 2315 words, enough for over 6 years of gameplay), which was already had very obscure words filtered out by his girlfriend.

wooer some bullshit

Semantle is better

I like it because it's only once a day--it's impossible to develop the kind of addiction I have to internet Scrabble and internet backgammon. Half the time I forget to even check for that day's Wordle. I've done about 40--only got it in two once. I don't think I'd ever post on Facebook about it...though I do post Scrabble screenshots here and on Facebook.

It seems like the bulk of people came to Wordle very late in its run (the first time I remember seeing results shared en masse was somewhere in the 190s), so I have to imagine many of the most familiar words had already dropped off the list before people noticed it.

(xps & ledge has already got there first but)

I agree that this could happen (though have not paused to guess how many five letter words might be reasonably familiar to most people) but the 3rd and 4th Wordle answers were "sissy" and "humph"!

Can only imagine the reaction to those on Twitter now, "sissy" with a triple letter and a word I would not care to use in conversation unless very obviously joking, and "humph" right on the onomatopoeic word-or-not faultline (although I think it came up in Dordle or Quordle or Octordle recently).

(Yes I have been playing all 4 of these games lately; Wordle is a nice quick thing to do when you have a spare minute, and Quordle hits the a better sweet spot for actual puzzliness for me. Octordle is just too much, although possibly only because the UI is horrible and you can only see two of the words at once.)

Once I realized there was no skill involved, and heaps of luck

Half agree with this. One weird thing is that getting it in two (where's there's at least some reasoning involved) is more impressive than getting it in one (100% blind luck). I feel like I've used a lot of reasoning in the ones I've gotten in three and four.

I mean there’s the same amount of luck involved as other letter guessing games like wheel of fortune & hangman

xp yes, picking a second or third guess to eliminate as many alternatives as possible is definitely something you can do to improve on blind luck.

here's a few out of many non obscure words in the last 50 or so (apologies if anyone remembers this six years from now and complains about spoilers): hello, adult, rival, piece.

I'd say getting it in 2 is mostly just luck, though you can boost your chances a bit, and there can be a large amount of luck even with the 3s; if you're unlucky and/or don't pause to think through all the options you can lose, but most players will get there in less than 6 most days. So from the game design point of view Wordle is not perfect, but it's a fun enough pastime for a tea break, anyway.

And I admit when I see the green and yellow squares popping up I mostly think "nobody cares how many you got it in" (but yes, I've still talked about the day's puzzles online, so guilty too) but it's kind of nice to see the internet talking about something so harmless imo.

Working from home, I get to watch a TV quiz show called "Lingo".

This, basically, is the same as Wordle. Or so it seems.

I have not signed onto "Wordle" or anything similar, as the TV show is enough already.

(xp to self) Or, a month ago there were a lot of squares on my timeline and I'd think "nobody cares" but now there aren't so many, so when they do pop up it can be vaguely interesting to see if I can work backwards a bit to guess what word the poster started with.

(If I know them well enough to care at all what random words they typed into a webpage, which tbh is probably a stupid thing to think about at all.)

I just tried Semantle! God it is hard. I guessed the second-closest word on my 25th guess then spent my next twenty guesses on variations of that word instead of... something immediately adjacent to that word

Wordle is fine. I'm less interested in it now that it's on the Times website, and presumably will be paywalled soon. I still do them some days. It was fun when it was just a random web thing, sort of felt like a 90s internet throwback. I knew it wouldn't last that way.

I think its neat that it's a one-a-day thing and everyone gets the same word. the communal aspect of that is cool & I like that it only asks for a couple minutes of your day. watching Twitter bitch about a word like TACIT is kinda fun

Yeah, this. I don't post my own results on social media, but my wife and text them to each other every morning, and I'll occasionally chime in on someone else's Wordle post. I think it's a charming little game, with a charming little backstory, and it's charming that the dude got a million bucks from the NYT for something he made just for fun. Hard for me to see the harm.

my wife and I, that should say.

man alive otm

the original site's code was 100% client-side so you could just save the webpage to your computer and it would work offline for another 6 years until it runs out of words. i.e. it was made in a way thats impossible to paywall. the times basically just bought the name & idea.

My favorite thing was the pissy person on Twitter who scraped the word list from the code and made a bot that would post spoilers for tomorrow's word on everyone's results, I have never been irritated by something so much that it made me go out of my way to be an ass to people I don't know

chocks away and, of course, chock-a-block

there really isn't another word for the wedge that keeps wheeled vehicles from rolling away so i guess it's a little unusual but probably said more often than, say NENE or LANAI

My default first two words narrowed it down to a single possible answer as far as I could tell, and after getting it imagine my surprise when Wordlebot said I was lucky because CHOUX was also an equally valid solution.

"There was only one possible solution left - and this wasn't it"

Fuck you very much WordleBot

I got CR--- and used all the vowels up and was like oh no I glitched Worlde

I got it in four but I had eliminated enough letters so I was methodically trying to come up with an actual word with what was left

As in I had the R and T, and had eliminated the possibility of a 2nd T, all the vowels except O, as well as H and S

Wordle is spiritually the same game as golf

1st attempt - your driver, a word with maximum impact, a good spread of high-usage letters. scoring on this turn is 1-in-a-million

2nd attempt - you might need another long drive here, though with a bit of luck you'll be close enough to starting homing in on the target. a combination of a good first drive and luck will very occasionally net you an eagle here

3rd attempt - usually your first attempt at a putt. going for the hole this time. a birdie.

4th attempt - it either just lipped out or went wildly off course - in either case you're annoyed now. tap it in for par if you can.

5th attempt - fuck. fuck.

6th attempt - yeah whatever, it was a stupid hole anyway

The ADIEU-CORNY gambit made this an easy three.

yes indeed! i actually eagled it

(i did it the other way round)

I did TASER - COURT

went the same as DJP but with a different first word for the birdie.

I also got it in 4 but my third guess was CROFT which is the one WordleBot said wasn't a word

I got it in 3, with a Slate, Truck combo, and then some frustration and luck.

I doubt I'll ever stray from ADIEU as my starting word but my second go-to if all the vowels miss is usually STORY -- I burned a guess on TRYST just to try to make progress and seeing if I'd happened to luck into greens and pretty quickly got it on my next guess.

yeah i shot with that same word on three

in 3 today, third time in a week (tho one really should've been in 2)

I do love to play AUDIO STORE

a gigs a gig

my 3s are equal to my 5s 💀

I imagine mine are pretty average ilx-wise, 4 being the biggest, followed by 3 (which are about 80-90% of the 4 total), with 5 being a little less than half of the 4 total, then a smattering of 6.

i should've had this one in three ramen - envoy but my brain collapsed and needed four

Gah, today's answer is one of 7-8 starter words I cycle through randomly, but not the one I started with today.

Heh it's very close to my starter word, glad I didn't switch it up today (sometimes I've been using RAMEN as suggested by this thread)

I use one that's close to it sometimes too, yeah.

Today was crazy. Got it in 4, but Wordlebot tells me my Skill rating was 98 out of 99 and that “no one in our sample of 1,782,205 completed Wordles faced this scenario!”

It about did me in today. I ended up getting it in 6 but it was with a 50% chance of losing.

“no one in our sample of 1,782,205 completed Wordles faced this scenario!”

Whoa. 6 for me today but it was the only possible option

I've never really got to grips with what the "x number of people faced this situation" means

I got it in 5, but there were only 2 options I could think of on guess 4, and I picked the wrong one first

Crashed out today - got stuck in the trench - had three greens by guess 3 but too many viable words

enjoyed that one

got it thusly

0
0
1
correct answer

but i glared at it for a good two mins

I was same as emsworth. I think using that particular verb form is pretty sketch tbh.

i'm just flat out making up fake Guided by Voices song based on my wordle submissions

the local favorite
ramen grout worms boxer
was the fan chanted favorite
but he's a midcard
so they knew he's
an inevitable disaster

After my opener, I had 2 green vowels but a dozen options, so I sacrified my 3rd guess with a bunch of consonants so I could get it in four rather than not get it at all.

After four guesses, I'd narrowed it down to BOXER, HOMER, and JOKER. Since I only had two guesses left, I wanted to use my next guess on a word that contained unique letters from each of those three words. I was pleased to have thought of BOKEH, which then gave me what I needed to get it in 6.

I got it in 5 but I sacrificed my 4th guess on a dick joke

I've been playing on hard mode for a few weeks so pleased with my 5

We don’t have a separate Wordall thread so I’ll just put this complaint here: gtfo with BALTI

Agreed, that was serious bullshit.

Also a word I use often, wilty, as in the lettuce was old and wilty, is evidently not a real word.

balti is exceedingly well known over here. i live near the balti triangle, though it's a shadow of its former self.

it was my last guess but I don't think it was unreasonable. there was a worse one recently but can't remember what!

I think Wordall has trended harder over past few weeks. There have been a few easy ones like yesterday but generally they seem to be including more obscure words in the solution set. uplit and balti = wtf

best time on Wordall is 59 seconds but it was one of those super easy ones that some of you would've nailed in half that time

ramen - aorta - stray

A rare 2!

me too!