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words are all I have
Thursday, 13 October 2022 11:17 amI am sure I am not the only person in the vicinity of this blog who has succumbed to Wordle. Everyone has succumbed to Wordle. I have definitely succumbed to Wordle, it causes me, mainly, a small infusion of joy every morning, with only occasional forays into swearing and resentment as I get three green squares by the second line and then go through four iterations trying to find the right letters for the gaps because it's a madly common word pattern and there are umpteen possibilities. But it's a good omen for the day when one has one of those Wordle moments when it all slots beautifully into mental place and I solve it in thirty seconds and three lines, cackling madly.
In the Department of Wordle-Specific moments, see also: Swearing At American Spellings; That's Not A Real Word How Dare; Fuck I Forgot I'd Ruled Out That Letter; WhatsApping Mother To Whinge Commiseratingly About Today's Wordbeast; The Rare And Radiant Smugness Of A Two Line Guess; The Equally Rare And Overpowering Shame of 'Whew'.
We all, I think, owe grateful thanks and possibly a small inscribed thesaurus to the gentlebeing who casually brought Wordle into existence in a moment of partnerly affection. It is, like all proper varieties of benign cultural obsession, a strangely simple and elegant thing. But it has also, I suspect, awoken a hitherto-unsuspected hunger in many of us for the pure and precise joy of the linguistic puzzle, the happy little dopamine hit of a miniature, self-contained solution. Which is why these games have tended to proliferate all over Teh Internets over the last few months, as creative types leap on bandwagons in all directions, and which is why I have twinned my morning Wordle with Waffle.
Waffle is somewhat different but equally pleasing: a five-by-five square crosshatching six five-letter words, with the letters scrambled up among them, and a similar colour coding to Wordle of orange or green letters to denote correct or adjacent positions. Requires the same mix of furious vocabulary-rifling while mentally repositioning specific letters. Voted more likely than Wordle to make one randomly crave severely unhealthy breakfast foods. And has two incredibly pleasing aspects lacking in Wordle: one, the six words are glossed below the grid when you've cracked it, which I find pleasantly educational. And two: the creator has a lovely line in cheery little affirmations when you pull off the reshuffle with four or five moves to spare, with a surprisingly large array of different ones so each morning is a happy little yodel to a different tune. Which culminated, this morning, in the below:
It's very validating. I bumble off into the rest of my day feeling Skilled and Successful. And possibly also Hyperlinguistic and Educated. Which are all very good things.
(Subject line is, of course, the Bee Gees, as is only appropriate in a post about letters).
In the Department of Wordle-Specific moments, see also: Swearing At American Spellings; That's Not A Real Word How Dare; Fuck I Forgot I'd Ruled Out That Letter; WhatsApping Mother To Whinge Commiseratingly About Today's Wordbeast; The Rare And Radiant Smugness Of A Two Line Guess; The Equally Rare And Overpowering Shame of 'Whew'.
We all, I think, owe grateful thanks and possibly a small inscribed thesaurus to the gentlebeing who casually brought Wordle into existence in a moment of partnerly affection. It is, like all proper varieties of benign cultural obsession, a strangely simple and elegant thing. But it has also, I suspect, awoken a hitherto-unsuspected hunger in many of us for the pure and precise joy of the linguistic puzzle, the happy little dopamine hit of a miniature, self-contained solution. Which is why these games have tended to proliferate all over Teh Internets over the last few months, as creative types leap on bandwagons in all directions, and which is why I have twinned my morning Wordle with Waffle.
Waffle is somewhat different but equally pleasing: a five-by-five square crosshatching six five-letter words, with the letters scrambled up among them, and a similar colour coding to Wordle of orange or green letters to denote correct or adjacent positions. Requires the same mix of furious vocabulary-rifling while mentally repositioning specific letters. Voted more likely than Wordle to make one randomly crave severely unhealthy breakfast foods. And has two incredibly pleasing aspects lacking in Wordle: one, the six words are glossed below the grid when you've cracked it, which I find pleasantly educational. And two: the creator has a lovely line in cheery little affirmations when you pull off the reshuffle with four or five moves to spare, with a surprisingly large array of different ones so each morning is a happy little yodel to a different tune. Which culminated, this morning, in the below:
It's very validating. I bumble off into the rest of my day feeling Skilled and Successful. And possibly also Hyperlinguistic and Educated. Which are all very good things.
(Subject line is, of course, the Bee Gees, as is only appropriate in a post about letters).
