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Wordle Postgame Report, July 25

GAMES OF SKILL AND CHANCE DEP'T.

Tom Scocca

Jul 26, 2022 — 2 min read

Eloping Philly Couple - Mabel Williamson and Malcolm Gehbauer, eloping from Philadelphia, and held by New York police, walking on the sidewalk, with a man holding a camera, below signs for "Rauff Electric Motor Co. Motors, Bought, Sold, Repaired:" and "Stern & Co. Machine Tools", New York, ca.1930s. (Photo by Weegee(Arthur Fellig)/International Center of Photography/Getty Images)

July 25, ELOPE, 6/6

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

A PLUNGE INTO the unknown. TALKY got a yellow L, and then CLOUD got a green L and O, with gray before and after: two chutes, one of them a double-wide. The L could be part of a consonant combination or paired with a vowel; the arrangement after the O could be just about anything—another O, another whole syllable? FLOWN got no new green, though it did also take CLOWN and ALONE off the long, long list of possibilities. SLOSH didn't get any more green, and playing the double S didn't eliminate very many other words. The gray spaces still loomed, pointing downward, with only two rows to go. Time to ditch Hard Mode rules and play GRIME, in the hopes of clearing enough letters? Or keep sliding? I played GLOOM, whiffing again. What consonant pairings were left? BL-? PL-? Suppose it wasn't a consonant at all? Here I was, about to fall off the bottom, and I still hadn't played the most common vowel of all. What if I played it twice? ELOPE. Made it official, just in time.

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