Day 70

Have you heard of Wordle? No, that's not a typo. Wordle is an online word game. It's not an app. You don't download it; you just open the Wordle web page which is now tied to the New York Times and the game awaits. 

The rules are simple: each day you have 6 tries to identify the word of the day (WOTD). Once you solve it or fail to solve it, you have to wait until the next day to play again. The WOTD is always 5 letters (e.g., "AUDIO", "CAULK", "RESIN", etc.). There are no clues as to what the WOTD is; you just have to use the process of elimination to figure it out. The objective of the first couple of tries is to identify letters that that the words contain. Sure, you might get super, crazy lucky and guess it on your first try but that is so unlikely people will probably accuse you of cheating. (Don't be that guy or gal.) Even hitting it on the second attempt is pretty rare. With each try, Wordle does the following with the letters in word just submitted:
  • Highlights in gray any letters that were that are not in the WOTD. These letters are now also grayed out on the keyboard so you can't use them again. 
  • Highlight in yellow - the color is weird; it's like yellow but not really - any letters that are in the WOTD but in the wrong position.
  • Highlight in green any letters that are in the WOTD and in the correct position. You win that day's game when all 5 squares are highlighed in green. 
Wordle will only accept words. No gibberish allowed. And if you play in "hard mode" then each subsequent try must contain the all the letters that have already been identified as being in the WOTD. 

After a win, the screen will flash your stats: the number of consecutive days in your current winning streak, your win percentage, and the breakdown of your wins by the number of guesses. Since I started playing just under 3 weeks ago, I've managed to keep a perfect score of all wins and no losses. That's 17 wins in a row in my current (and only!) streak. Most of my wins have taken 4 tries (8) but I do also have some 3s (4) and some 5s (5). No aces (1 try) and no bogeys (6 tries). 

I don't know what it is about this game, but...I. AM.  HOOKED. I found it by accident. I happened to see a headline while surfing the web that the New York Times had purchased Wordle. Intrigued, I opened the article and learned that Wordle had been invented by Josh Wardle (get it?) where he published it on his website. Word got out and the game went viral. This caught the attention of the NYT who purchased Wordle from Wardle for over $1M at the beginning of 2022. With the purchase, Wordle is now on the NYT website but it's still also on Wardle's website. What sucks is that while a user's game stats are supposed to transfer over when you switch web sites, for many users, myself included, this does not happen. So while my stats on Wardle's web site show that I have 17 consecutive wins; my stats on NYT's show only 4 consecutive wins. At first I thought I'd just keep playing both but then came to realize that the WOTD on Wardle's website is the same as the NYT's from the day prior. For this reason, I do have one ace on the Wardle site but I'm not counting it in my win streak. Looks like I'll have to abandon the Wardle site and my stellar win streak in favor of just playing the NYT's site page. It bums me out that I'm starting over in a sense but it could be worse...

Oh wait, it is worse. And maybe that's why I like it so much - Wordle is just a little oasis of joy in the ocean of turmoil and suffering that has become my life since Damian died. 

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