On January 20, I discovered that my Twitter feed often consists of some tiles with a combination of green, yellow and white squares. When I took a closer look at them, I saw that the word was written on the top, along with a number and fraction like 2/6 or 4/6. The 2/6 Dairy Milk Chocolate pattern resembles that.
I couldn’t make out a head or a tail of it. Looks like some color puzzle.
On January 24th, I received a WhatsApp forward from my friend that provided a link to an article about Wordle (well, it’s a word game) and its basic rules.
I’ve been a fan of jumbled word puzzles and used to pay attention to newspapers for these kinds of puzzles. Many weekends and office hours were spent solving them. And I am very good at it. So Wordle should be easy.
Ahh! My ego was wrong. I wish I had the patience to read the ground rules. Eliminate all the tiles without hitting the correct word.
Looked through the ground rules and tried to reach the game. Oh, the next game will be on the very next day. Wordle only follows one word per day! Even the newspaper jumbled had five words. Anyway, same word for all participants, so level playing field. And no need to download any app.
Knowing the rules on January 25, I was able to solve it 6/6. Looking back, I realized that I did something wrong. Used letters that had gray marking in later words. So basically, it is a guess-cum-elimination word game built on the basis of sound vocabulary. It only allows six attempts. A useful rule of thumb is that if any letters appear in a gray tile, make sure they are not in subsequent words.
Wow! The next day, I got 3/6 and as soon as I finished, the screen flashed “fantastic”. Some Google searches about the game’s background and its creators began. From all those readings, I could understand that the inventor of the game is a man named Josh Wardle and he did it to entertain his partner Palak Shah. This Indian affair would surely have warmed the cocks of many desi hearts. Wordle made its debut last October.
On January 30th, by now some of my friends have even begun to shatter their brains for that elusive word that could turn the row green within those six tries. I started getting their results on WhatsApp. From the timing of his messages, I felt that the Verdal universe could basically be divided into two: those who solve it around midnight, those who stay awake at those obscure hours when new puzzles are released, or those who Those who do it first thing in the morning.
On February 1, some forward links were found, stating that the New York Times had decided to purchase Wordle for “less than seven digits”. Checked out Twitter and it was full of opinions and memes ranging from plain surprise that the new game could catch fans of a reputable newspaper for fear that the game would soon go behind a paywall.
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