Wordle Postgame Report, July 30

July 30, BLUFF, 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.

IS IT SPORTING to play a word you suspect wouldn't actually be a Wordle answer? I thought about the word COPSE as I was going to sleep, wondering if it was related to "coppice." (It is.) So I woke up and played it as if it were a potentially valid Wordle result, regardless of my doubts. It definitely wasn't the answer to this one: it came up 100 percent gray. Draw five new letters: BRAIN. That got a green B. Not much positive to go on, but on the negative side of the ledger, the vowel possibilities were down to the dregs. Was it going to be U, or Y, or both? With C, R, N, and S all gone, the possibilities for three-letter consonant combinations seemed pretty thin. Try two vowels then: BUDDY. The U came up yellow, and the rest stayed gray. So it was B _ U, and that would have to be BLU- at this point, and BLUNT and BLUSH were already out. It would have to be BLUFF. Played it with complete confidence I was holding the winner.

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