Taking the world by storm, is the latest online game, Wordle, here to stay? Well, read on more before you try your hand in this game.
What exactly is Wordle and why is everyone going crazy over it? If you are currently in the ‘The Literature Division for Rebels‘ (aka TLDR), you would have noticed a new channel last month:
In this post, we’ll take a look at how it’s played and some strategies being used to tackle this simple-looking yet mentally challenging game.
Some background on Wordle
Like most ground-breaking apps and games, there’s a pretty romantic backstory of how Wordle came about. Last year, a New Yorker software engineer, Josh Wardle wanted to present his puzzle-obsessed partner with a gift. Hence, he decided to develop it on a simple browser-based interface, with no advertising or app. He never planned on taking it public.
“Even though I play it every day, I still feel a sense of accomplishment when I do it… It makes me feel smart and people like that”. – Josh Wardle on his thoughts of the game.
Clearly, many people agree with him. On 1st November 2021, it started with about 90 daily players. By January, it was reported that the number of daily players reached more than 2 million!
Wordle Gameplay
- Every day you are presented with a new puzzle. (There’ll be a countdown timer to let you know when the next puzzle is available)
- You have to guess a 5-letter word.
- You have 6 tries to guess the word.
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- Grey/Black boxes: Letter is not included in the daily word
- Yellow boxes: Letter is included but not in the right position
- Green boxes: Letter is included AND is in the right position
After which, you can show off your impressive solves in the form of coloured grids with your friends and rivals. Thank goodness letters are removed when you share your solves so there will be no spoilers.
Wordle Strategies
Many news outlets around the world also covered reports on this game. A puzzle editor at the Times offered tips on how to improve one’s score while the Guardian ran a column explaining the linguistic history of commonly used consonants. There is even a site that grades the efficacy of your opener word!
If you’re here to look for fool-proof Wordle strategies, I’m sorry to disappoint you – there isn’t one. However, let’s take a look at some strategies that have been shared by others:
Starting with a vowel-heavy word
Words such as ARISE, SUAVE, ADIEU, and AUDIO consist of three or four vowels. This helps to narrow the list of possible solutions since we will have a better idea of how many vowels there are in the word.
Starting with a less vowel-heavy word
The complete opposite strategy of the previous one is to use words with less vowels. Not everyone is convinced vowels are the way to go since there have been studies done to show that our brain naturally fills in vowels more easily than consonants.
Forget openers, I’m going with my feelings
When all these strategies are confusing you, well, just forget these openers! Some people choose to simply go with how they’re feeling and not think too much about their opening word. I guess if it works for them just fine, it’ll work for you just fine too!
What the TLDR community is doing
Before you go, here are some insights from some TLDR (and RF) members as to what they think of Wordle, how they got into this game and what are their personal strategies.
YipYorp
I try to start with words with several vowels and common letters, like MORES or PALES. I heard of it because my family started sending scores in our family group chat one day and I was like huh what’s going on? So it’s just a nice little thing that’s only two minutes out of my day but it’s still that little bit of connection with family I guess 🙂
nooza
Sometimes if a letter is in the right place already, I will try to use another word with that letter in a different place just to see what other letters might be in the answer. That is only if I cannot think of a word with the right letter in the right place at that moment. I don’t think I have a favourite starting word? It changes everyday aha just to mix it up. I think it’s a great way to sort of increase my (very limited) vocabulary. I’m someone who enjoys riddles and word games a lot so this is a great way for me to have a daily game c:
Abby
I love the game! Some of the tricks I use is trying to start with words with a lot of vowels or S, T, R, since those letters are common in words, other then that there’s really no tricks or tips I use, I play it as a guessing game. I always start out with AUDIO since there are so many vowels in it and sometimes I start with STARE since it has the 3 letters in it. Wordle is a good game and I am happy it got its fame because I enjoy playing it, it has became a part of my routine, wake up, get ready, play wordle.
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