BY FREDA MIKLIN
GOVERNMENTAL REPORTER
If you watch TV, read the newspaper, or talk to people, you’ve probably heard someone mention the most popular new web-based word game that’s come around in a long time. It’s called Wordle.
Wordle was originally developed by Josh Wardle and made public just four short months ago but millions are already playing it, mostly on their smart phones. The game started out and it still free to play, even though it was purchased by the New York Times in January for a reported seven figures and moved to their website this month. The rumor is that they pledged to keep it free.
Wordle is a game where you solve for a common five-letter word once each day by guessing letters that are in it. You try to figure out the word by entering a word in the five spaces for the letters of the word of the day and getting feedback as to whether the letters in the word you entered are in the word of the day and whether they are in the correct spot. For instance, if the word of the day is grape and you guessed the word proud as your first attempt, Wordle would tell you by colors that light up when you enter your guess that the letter p is in the word but in a different position, the letter r is in the word in the correct position, and the letters g, a, and e are not in the word. Using that feedback, you guess another word, and so on. You get six tries to get the right word.
One of the fun aspects of playing this game is it has a feature that allows you to easily share your results (how many tries it took you to guess the correct word) with members of a text message group without disclosing the word, so folks compete with their friends or family members to see who gets it the quickest. If you do that, consider disabling your text message sounds for the group so you don’t get awakened by insomniacs in your group who play the game right when or shortly after the new word changes each day. In our time zone, that happens at midnight and this reporter will admit to doing it in the middle of the night if I happen to wake up.
One more hint—the standard colors that Wordle uses to tell you if your letters are correct and/or in the right position are gold and green, but if you choose the brighter version in the settings, you’ll get Denver Bronco colors!
Once you feel like you’re ready for the next challenge, there’s now a math version of this game called Nerdle. The nice feature of these games is that there is only one word every 24 hours on Wordle and one equation every 24 hours on Nerdle, which changes at 5:00 p.m. in the mountain time zone, so it won’t keep you busy all day long like other games can. Anyone who plays the New York Times Spelling Bee has probably experienced that.
Regardless, this game fits in the category of exercises to keep aging brains agile so that’s reason enough to try it.
Fmiklin.villager@gmail.com