Wordle Postgame Report, CATCH UP: September 8-September 11
GAMES OF SKILL AND CHANCE DEP'T.
September 8, CLASS, 2/6
The Wordle Postgame Report is a brief analysis of a game of Wordle, the five-letter-word guessing game now owned by the New York Times. If you do not play Wordle, Indignity encourages you to please skip this item. The existence of the Wordle Postgame Report not constitute an endorsement of playing Wordle, not playing Wordle, or of the New York Times.
THERE WASN’T TIME to sit down to Wordle till I'd walked back from the dropoff at the first day of middle school. Starting with SCALD made up for lost time: yellow S, C, and L, around a green A. (The Times Wordlebot's evaluation: "a decent opening word, and a distinctive one! (Today it was played by less than 0.1% of players.) And it was extraordinarily lucky today.") Unquestionably the CL would go in front of the A, and the S would go after it. CLASH, CLASP, or CLASS? I leaned toward CLASH at first, but how could I not play CLASS on the occasion? If there's one lesson Wordle teaches, it's to trust in the double letters. The four obvious letters turned green, and then so did the S. Dismissed.
September 9, THEME, 5/6
IT WOULD HAVE been reckless to open with QUEEN, but CROWN seemed close enough. Not close enough to the Wordle answer, unfortunately (or was it?), so confronted with all gray letters, I went with DEATH. Yellow E, yellow T, yellow H. Let the colonial subjects have a word, with THIEF. Green TH, yellow E. Time to quit playing around with meanings and find a set of letters that fit. THESE? All green but the S. THEME. The real underlying motif was the underlying motif.
September 10, LOFTY, 4/6
STARTING OUT WITH SHARK brought nothing but gray. Losing S, H, R, and K seemed to eliminate anything with C in it, too, but I played TOPIC next anyway. Yellow T, green O—a sort of lopsided word, then. DOTTY? No to the D and the first of the T's. Lousy word, anyway. Aim for something more refined: LOFTY.
September 11, TIBIA, 5/6
A HORRIBLE, UNRELENTING game began with a try for MERCY, getting five gray boxes in return. SPOUT almost matched it, save for a yellow T. Where would the T belong, and which of the rapidly dwindling supply of letters would go around it? GLITZ still had the T in a wrong spot, now joined by an I in the wrong spot. Turn No. 4 had arrived, and all it was really possible to say about the word was all the things it wasn't. TWAIN? A green T at last, the I also green, and a grudging yellow A to join them. Did it end in -IA? What else could it do? And getting there would require another I or A, somewhere earlier, since no other vowels were left. There was only one piece that seemed to fit the skeleton: TIBIA. After all that work, a real kick in the shin.
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