It’s been a month since I have posted on this blog.  If you’ve been clamoring for new content on a regular basis and wondering why it’s taken me so long…maybe it’s because I discovered Wordle.

Since Wordle has exploded in popularity over the past month, it’s probably common knowledge by now what it is.  But just in case you haven’t found out about it yet (or you’ve seen it but haven’t taken the time to investigate it yet, or you’re still stubbornly holding out), I’ll give you the scoop here.  I’ll also provide some information on some other puzzles you can try as well.

Wordle is an online daily puzzle, created by Josh Wardle, in which you are given six tries to guess a specific five-letter word of the day.  It can be found here: www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle

You may have seen people share their daily Wordle score on social media, with some weird grid consisting of green, yellow, and gray squares (or green, yellow, and black), with no explanation.  I finally broke down two weeks ago and decided to investigate for myself what this meant.  For those of you who have still not investigated this for yourself yet, here’s how it works:

Go to the Wordle website and guess any five-letter word.  Of course, there’s a strategy as to the best word to start with, but more on that later.  Once you hit enter, any letters that turn green are correct, any letters that turn yellow are somewhere in the word but in a different spot, and any letters that turn gray are not in the word.  This will give you some clues as to how to proceed with subsequent guesses.  Again, you have six tries to guess the word correctly.  Once you’re done, you have the option to share your score, complete with the grid of squares from your puzzle.  The actual letters will be hidden, so as to not contain any spoilers for anyone else.  A correct guess on the 5^th try, for example, will result in a score of 5/6.  Not guessing the word correctly by your 6^th try will result in a score of X/6.  There’s only one puzzle per day, so win or lose, you then have to wait until the next day to try again.

As of this posting, there have now been 231 Wordle puzzles, but everyone seems to have just been finding out about it over the past month or so.  Why it is now exploding in popularity?  Perhaps everyone is latching onto it because people are staying indoors with COVID, or from COVID, or because it’s winter and it’s cold and snowy outside, and it this gives people something to do, if even for a few minutes a day.  Whatever the reason, it’s the new popular thing for people to do.  Except for the people who refuse to do it because it’s the new popular thing.

For me, this is now Day 15 since I took the time to find out how Wordle works and started playing it.  I’m proud to say that I am now 15-for-15 in the official daily Wordle puzzles.  Granted, that’s not without some close calls, so it’s only a matter of time before my perfect streak is broken.

What’s the secret to my success so far?  I would say that some of it is luck.  But maybe I’ve also figured out a strategy.  I believe I’ve settled on a good opening word to use as my first guess on all my recent Wordles.  I won’t share on here exactly what my current opening word is.  But I’ll give you a hint – it has four vowels.  I figure that if I try to figure out the vowels as quickly as possible, that will most likely help me figure out the word.  It’s worked so far, anyway.

Also, maybe part of the secret to my success is practice.  You might be wondering, “How can you practice?  There’s only one puzzle per day!”  But there are ways to play Wordle other than the official Wordle site.  One option is the Wordle app.  If you download the Wordle app to your phone, you can play Wordle as much as you want.  It has a daily puzzle as well, completely different from the official Wordle puzzle, because I assume it’s run by different people.  It also has a custom puzzle which you can play as long as you want, as long as you are willing to put up with ads between each puzzle (or pay $9.99 without ads, which I am not doing).  So, if you find yourself stuck indoors with nothing better to do except write a blog post or play Wordle, you can spend a few minutes on the Wordle app until you get tired of watching ads.  Incidentally, my perfect streak is specific to the official Wordle games, since I have lost a few while playing on the app.

Another option for playing Wordle is to go to this site: www.hellowordl.net

Here, you can play Wordle, using words of anywhere from 4-11 letters.  I haven’t tried the 11-letter challenge; I don’t know that many 11-letter words.  But regardless of the length of the word you want to play with, it could be a source of fun for those who want to play more Wordle.  (Thanks to Elli for the tip on this site.)

But wait, there’s more!  For the mathematically inclined such as myself, there is now also a puzzle called Nerdle. www.nerdlegame.com

This one is similar to Wordle, except in this one, there are eight characters, and you have to guess the correct math equation.  You are given six guesses, using the digits from 0-9, as well as +, -, *, /, and =.  So, for example, you might guess 2*8+3=19.  These characters will appear as either green, purple, or black.  Green means correct, purple means it’s in another spot, and black means it’s not in the equation.  As a math person myself, I find this one fun as well.  (Thanks to Brian for the tip on this site, although this has been shared with me by other people in the days since.)

And, if Wordle and Nerdle aren’t enough for you, there is now even another puzzle geared toward you Taylor Swift fans out there, because some people just don’t know when to stop.  Introducing Taylordle…just like Wordle, except all the words have some sort of association with Taylor Swift. Now we’re just being ridiculous. I tried it anyway, just because. www.taylordle.com

These puzzles should be more than enough to keep you occupied for a while.  For those of you who are just finding about this for the first time, feel free to join the fun.  (Hurry, while Wordle is still free, in case the New York Times sticks it behind a paywall and ruins everyone’s fun.)  If you’re still holding out and refusing…well, you’re missing out.  I hope you can find something else to do to keep you occupied until we can all go out and do things again.  Or at least until my next blog post.