My Blog Week: January 23 to January 29

A Word on the Week

A Word on Wordle

In this belated edition, I want to do a short, fun bit, on the trending puzzle game Wordle. I do my daily crossword, the New York Times Spelling Bee, and Sudokus; and once the buzz began for Wordle, I was happy to check it out. In the wake of the NYT purchase of the game, I think it’s important not to let it become another weirdly politicized discussion—whether it ought to be free, whether with puzzles there can be such a thing as selling out (and what artistic integrity would amount to).

I enjoy a YouTube channel called Cracking the Cryptic, where the experts at various types of puzzles (British champions Mark Goodliffe and Simon Anthony) solve tough ones and explain their techniques. From watching I’ve learned that the puzzling world has it’s fine points, while the two hosts seem good-natured and respectful to their audience. Could MAGA-style a**holery get into even the world of puzzle geeks? Of course. It will show up anywhere people are coming together for a common pleasure, and by huffing and puffing at “authenticity” (a posture propagandists steal from critical reviewing, the theme I’ve been analyzing in these WoWs), trolls will sow the usual division among friends that trolling is designed to sow. The topic itself is a drag…but the fact is, these campaigns are that predatory, that ubiquitous, that our only hope of getting our nice and democratic world back is to spot the trolls everywhere.

Then we can ignore them. So I wanted to share a little insight I’ve obtained, addressing the advice I’ve seen, to start Wordle with certain key words. Does it help? Wordle is a deductive game, like Sudoku. Since wisely, the puzzle is available in only one unit per day, not a lot of testing can go on. But let’s say you began with the word aisle, a good choice for eliminating key vowels and two common consonants. So far, I’ve achieved the Wordle on my second guesses twice, and second guess success should be the most telling circumstance for whether a perfect start word can exist. 

(Here would be spoilers, so bail if you like. But I think finished-and-done Wordle answers don’t harm anyone.)

My first time I entered the word locus. I got a green square for L and the rest were grey. The next guess wasn’t happenstance, though it had some luck in it. But consider that if the L was at the beginning of the word, then it might be LEA or LI, possibly LY—but not lyric, because the C was eliminated. It couldn’t be leach or least, because the C and S were eliminated. So locus fairly strongly forced the word light, which was the answer.

The second time I put in the word maize. Here the M and I were both green, correct letters in the correct places. What word, then, without A or E available, that has M-space-I, could it be? Maize as a choice seemed to force moist with no other choice I can think of offhand. And moist was the answer. In the first case aisle would have given me an L in the wrong place, and an I in the right place, with A, S, and E eliminated. In the second case, aisle would have given me an I and an S, both in the wrong places, and no clear direction for guessing. 

So I would conclude, have fun choosing your words and don’t apply strategy until you have elimination on your side.