Newsletter

Wordle Postgame Report, July 27

GAMES OF SKILL AND CHANCE DEP'T.

Tom Scocca

28 Jul 2022 — 2 min read

Device of Louis XII, King of France, 1498-1515. A porcupine with the MOTTO Cominus et eminus, From Far and Near. This was the device of his grandfather, who, in 1397 instituted the Order of the Porcupine. From Science and Literature in The Middle Ages by Paul Lacroix published London 1878 (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

July 27, MOTTO, 4/6

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.

ONCE AGAIN, “MORE green = less fun" was the slogan to live by. MOUSE got a green M and O right away. Forty percent of the word solved already! At this rate, it would be 120 percent done on round three! Except for the fact that the remaining three letters could have been just about anything. MOLDY established that none of them were -LDY. MOIST was out because the S was goine. MOA-? MOA-what? MOPAR? How about a solid block of consonants to fill that big space: MONTH? That got the T, in green. There weren't enough useful consonants left to make another row of three. Another vowel, somewhere. MOAT-? Nothing. Scratch paper: M O _ T _. The switch from looking at it on screen to looking at in in pencil was enough: the unused letters had seemed so unpromising because they were all going to stay unused. MOTTO. It should have been a sneakily challenging word, but there was no entertainment in trudging after it down a straight green line.

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