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Wordle Postgame Report, Holiday Weekend CATCH-Up, December 30, 2022–January 2, 2023

GAMES OF SKILL AND CHANCE DEP'T.

Tom Scocca

03 Jan 2023 — 3 min read

The Battle of Hampton Roads, often called the Battle of Monitor and Merrimack, was a naval battle of the American Civil War, famous for being the first fight between two ironclads, the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (the latter rebuilt from the burned-out hull of the USS Merrimack). The principal confrontations took place on March 8 and 9, 1862, off Sewell's Point, a narrow place near the mouth of Hampton Roads, Virginia. The naval confrontations spanned two days. The first day saw Virginia wreak HAVOC on the wooden Union ships blockading the harbor. However, on the second day Monitor arrived and initiated the famous duel of the ironclads. The battle, though inconclusive, received worldwide publicity. After the battle, it was clear that ironclad ships were the future of naval warfare. (Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images)

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 does not constitute an endorsement of playing Wordle, of not playing Wordle, or of the New York Times.

December 29, HAVOC, 5/6

AFTER THE STARTING play of CRUSH got a yellow C and H, it seemed reasonable to put them together. The answer couldn't begin or end with CH, though. ITCHY? Still yellow. Split them apart again: WHACK. Yellow again, joined by a yellow A. I was running out of rows and out of places the C and H could go; the latter had to run out first, but would I know enough to solve the word by then? Desperate enough to try a verb tense, I put them back together once more, with ACHED. Still yellow. Four guesses down for each consonant, four wrong placements. The H could only go in the first spot, and the C only in the last. What could possibly—HAVOC. Getting there was pure chaos.

December 30, MOLAR, 4/6

I HADN’T THOUGHT of playing PLEAT before, but it seemed like a low-risk opener, and got a medium-reward result: yellow L, green A. I tried the L at the end, in FINAL, but that wasn't it. In the middle, then, and with an O now that E and I were gone? SOLAR came up green everywhere but the first position. MOLAR. No sharp insights, just a steady grinding away at the answer.

December 31, MANLY, 6/6

THE IDEA OF using GNASH had never crossed my mind before, but now that it had, I liked it. The N and A were both yellow, an apparent good start. APRON kept them both yellow, and the start was now not so good. Still, I'd worked through enough letters it seemed OK to try a double with CANNY. The result was too much green: the A, the first N, and the Y. Was a pair of chutes forming on me? I thoughtlessly or recklessly doubled up on another letter, in DANDY. No luck. I had to get on the road for New Year's Eve; I wasn't in the mood to count up the remaining options or strategize about the safest way to play the last two rows. LANKY got a yellow L. One guess left, and the word had to be something -ANLY. MANLY or WANLY? If I was going to blow it, I wasn't going to blow it on something feeble. I played the M. It turned green. Courageous, confident, and more than a little stupid.

January 1, 2023: WHINE, 4/6

IN HONOR OF the swiftly vanished old year I played BRIEF, for a green I and yellow E. Repositioning the E with SHINE turned everything green but the S. New year, easy start. Except from some rusty corner of my mind all I could hear was the phrase "chined like a beam." I couldn't even remember what it meant, except it was some archaic explanation of how some animal was supposed to be put together (a greyhound, I eventually figured out, as attributed to Dame Juliana Berners, in the 15th century). Obviously the Wordle answer was not going to be CHINE. But by the time I'd forced that ancient word out of my mind, THINE seemed utterly reasonable by comparison. What else could it be? The T stayed gray. The third turn was wasted. What had I missed? W. Easy, obvious. Something to gripe about already in 2023.

January 2, 2023, SKIRT, 4/6

TRYING OUT A less ordinary letter in the opener, with SHAVE, got the fairly ordinary result of a green S. STONY added a yellow T, while eliminating two more vowels. Something more consonant-heavy, then. SPURT? The RT ending was right, the P and U were not: there was only one vowel left, and not many consonants to combine the S with. SKIRT. I'd worked my way around the edge of the answer.

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