Wordle Postgame Report, weekend CATCH up, November 18-20
GAMES OF SKILL AND CHANCE DEP'T.
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, not playing Wordle, or of the New York Times.
November 18, GLYPH, 2/6
IF YESTERDAY’S STARTER was STOCK, today could be nothing but GRAVY. Green G and...a yellow Y? With the Y going somewhere in the middle of the word, that eliminated just about everything. The single symbol conveyed all the information it possibly could: GLYPH.
November 19, AVERT, 4/6
THE OPENING CHOICE of BLAST seemed at first to have shaken loose some good information: a yellow A and a green T. But I couldn't keep all the possibilities properly sorted out: was this a symmetrical, two syllable word, with A in the second spot? Or the fourth spot? Or did it begin with A? Or was it somehow a single syllable? None of these abstract ideas about word-form managed to conjure a word; it seemed desperately important to place the A. First I fixed on AWAIT, but that would have repeated the middle A. What about CARAT? Inserted thought: wouldn't CARET be a better guess? Wasn't a repeating letter wasteful? Weren't both choices fairly terrible words, though, and wasn't I reduced to guessing things like that because I didn't have a fix on the A? CARAT, then. The first A was yellow, the second was gray, and between them was a yellow R. So the A had to go to the front, but now the R took over the job of being a floating annoyance. I wasn't even trying to guess a good answer, just to pin down a pieces of information that could get me in position to guess: ARGOT. Yellow R. A-something-something-R-T. AVERT. The oncoming sense of failure turned aside.
November 20, BRAVE, 5/6
THE BAD KIND of green showed up at once, with BRASH turning over a green B, R, and A, and raising the false hope of an easy finish. Maybe the almost-visible answer was BRAND, maybe it was BRAKE. I went back and forth, overthinking it, till I played BRAIN instead. Not BRAIN. BRAND was too depressing a word, so BRAKE. Not BRAKE, but the E turned green too. A real chute was forming. Would BRACE work? No, the crash was still coming. Two rows to go. I calmed down. I was going to beat this grid. After BRAKE failed and BRACE couldn't hold, what could there be but BRAVE?
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