Wordle Postgame Report, EXTRA Wordle Results to CATCH Up On

A Very Special Weekend Compilation of Wordle Results.

The Wordle Postgame Report is a brief analysis of a past game of Wordle, the five-letter-word guessing game now owned by the New York Times. Because Wordle runs seven days a week, and Indignity has been publishing Wordle Postgame Reports five days a week, we have developed a backlog of Wordle Postgame Reports, which we now collect in one big special catch-up presentation. If you do not play Wordle, Indignity encourages you to please skip this item. The existence of the Wordle Postgame Report does not constitute an endorsement of playing Wordle, of not playing Wordle, or of the New York Times.

June 21, GLOAT, 3/6

GOT TWO GREEN letters out of starting with CLEAR, on the L and the A. That gave two pretty big hints about the structure: an opening consonant cluster of something-L, followed by a diphthong of something-A. Some stuck switch in my brain kept trying to derive PLIAR from "pliers." but that wasn't a word, and even if it were a word, it wouldn't be a Wordle word. There weren't that many -L clusters to go through, were there? PLEAT would require the E, and the E was already gone. FLIA—no, FLOAT. What a nice uplifting word to win with, right there on round two! The F stayed gray, -LOAT turned green. Was this going to turn into another chute ride? How long could the chute last? SLOAT, no such thing, just my brain trying to wring it out of "sloe" and "shoat." Aw, heck: GLOAT. What else was left? There it was, GLOAT, all green. No reason to exult in my triumph. At least not until later, when I retroactively realized it could also have been BLOAT.

June 22, AWFUL, 3/6

WHEN I TRY to convince myself there's a strategy behind trying a different Wordle opener every day, beyond just the urge to fool around, the reason or rationalization I come up with is that I'm doing "high-variance" gameplay: it's less likely I'll hit on any of the letters, but if I do hit on any letters, I might know more about the word. This time I started with FLIER, and the F and L came up yellow. So there were two less frequent letters, and they were somewhere inside the word. Would they still be together? I couldn't immediately think of a word with an -FL- combination in its interior. Split them up: LOFTY. The F turned green in the middle position; the L stayed yellow, eliminating it from the front end of the word entirely. Two syllables, with no identified vowels yet and only two vowels left in the vowel-bag. What could it be but AWFUL? An adjective answer, like a double letter, is one of those things Wordle employs that feels a little tricky but also entirely fair. It was nice to catch it.

June 23, BRINK, 4/6

PART OF MY process of choosing a new starting word is to try to wipe the mind completely blank, which I did so well today that I put down CLEAT without even realizing I'd played CLEAR two days ago. It hit on absolutely nothing. Time for a completely different word in round two: POUND. A green N, and only that. Two more vowels left to try. I thought of BRINY, and wondered if it was Wordle-y enough. In a flash, so fast that I completely forgot about the N, I decided I liked GRIMY better. Hard Mode would have stopped me from playing, but I operate in a self-administered pretend Hard Mode, rather than activating the official Hard Mode. So I lost the N and got green on the R and I. That sent me circling back in the direction of BRINY, which would now have to be something slightly different: BRINK. A newspaper-writing word. Adequate, and here correct, as a Wordle answer.

In retrospect, if I'd successfully followed my own rules and realized I should play BRINY over GRIMY, I would have hit four out of five letters but then, with the G still unused, I would have surely wasted a turn on BRING, a better word, before getting to BRINK on the fifth guess.

June 24, SMITE, 4/6

HOPES FOR A quick win were forcefully struck down. HOIST as the opener got me a green I and a yellow S and T. Keep them paired, swing them to the front of the word, and STINK was clearly more fun to play than STICK. But—no, a green S, but a yellow T. With the S and I already in place, the only untried spot for T was fourth position. S _ I T _. The H was out of the game already, O or A didn't immediately suggest anything, and ending on TS felt like it would mostly be the dread plurals. E, then. SPITE! Confidence gave way to regular, lowercase spite as the P stayed gray. S _ I T E. Wordle would never dare do SHITE, as a bad word and a non-Americanism, plus, again, the H was gone. What was left? SWITE, SFITE, SCITE...argh, down in the far corner of the keyboad layout, of course, SMITE. Knock me dead. OK word, archaic but silly enough to make up for the archaism.

June 25, BEADY, 3/6

ONE BIG BREAKTRHOUGH for me this year has been figuring out, with the guidance of Tim Marchman and Albert Burneko, how to acceptably POACH an egg. Talk about solving puzzles! If you've got a big strainer spoon and some eggs, the essence of a nourishing meal is mere minutes away—over rice with some furikake, over sardines on an English muffin, at the bottom of a bowl of instant ramen to make it a serviceable lunch. Here, POACH got me a green A and nothing else.

Round two: STARE. A yellow E joined the A, and the word turned into a command: stare. And stare, and stare. It didn't look like much—only six letters eliminated, and two common vowels to work with—but the game had tightened up so much it was hard to see where the next word would come from. Putting the E right after the A would be weird; what Wordle words would have -AE- in them? But if the E went in front of the A, that would leave two blank spaces after the -EA-. And most of the obvious two-consonant combinations— -ST, -CH, -SH, -SP, -RS, -RP—were already gone.

This was the good kind of stuck to be. What could fill that opening at the end of _ E A _ _ ? How about a Y? HEAVY was out, because of the H, or anything with -TY or -RY. How about -DY? _ E A D Y ... BEADY. Just had to squint my eyes at it long enough.

The Wordle Postgame Report will be posted semi-regularly on the website of the Indignity newsletter, or possibly even daily if people turn out to want to read it. If you enjoy reading the Wordle Postgame Report, please subscribe to Indignity to support the writer in doing this and other things that would be hard to justify at a salaried day job. Thank you for reading!