Said Doug Dodson, a 39-year-old classical singer in Atlanta, quoted in
"LOSER/When you fail at Wordle for the first time, it may affect you more than you think" (Slate)
Dodson said he even finds it amusing to occasionally post his losing grids on social media: “If I didn’t get it in some spectacularly embarrassing way, I will share it.”
“There was one where I got the first, third, and fourth letters correct on the first try and then never was able to fill in either of the other two letters,” Dodson said. When that happened, a friend was so baffled at how he still managed to lose that she reached out to him. “She was like, ‘I would love to know what words you guessed,’ ” he said.
Eric Allix Rogers, a 36-year-old who works at a nonprofit in Chicago and is a multiple-time Wordle loser, said he believes in sharing his losses online for almost philosophical reasons: “It violates that expectation of curating an image of success and perfection on social media, the posting your Ls.”
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We have a family group (10-70) and all sometimes post results. We tend to post either the very good or very bad results of the games each of us chooses to play: Wordle, Dordle, Quordle, Octordle, Wheredle, and Worldle. (There are a few others which I forget. We have each our favorites.) But it is mostly the outliers that are entertaining, such as what to do when you are in hard mode and have the choices SCARE, SHARE, SNARE, SPARE, and STARE with four slots left.
So say you get _ _ I N K right the first guess. How many words are possible? Think. Stink. Blink. Slink. Chink. Plink. Clink. Boink. Drink. Maybe more. Easy to waste turns trying for the winner rather than throw away a turn to eliminate possibilities.
I hate playing tactical ball. Home runs are my middle name. (Strikeouts are my other middle name.)
BTW, for Quordle and Octordle, LATER, COINS, PUDGY are lock-solid wins. But like M Jordan, I sometimes eschew them in order to see if I can get answers sooner by skipping one.
My Wordle streak is intact from the beginning at 91. I've only gotten to 6 twice.
Quordle, on the other hand, can be a humbling experience. My success rate on it is running around 85%. I've found that it's harder to get a 6 in Quordle than it is to get a 2 on Wordle.
I say that and then get a 6 on today's Daily Quordle. 🤷♂️
2 yesterday, 4 today.
I lost once but it was because of the guessing game noted by M Jordan.
I will live...
I haven't Wordled in weeks, and never did look at the spinoffs. My wife is still pretty regular and consistent, and shares her numbers with me.
Especially the extremes.
When you're left with several different possibilities for the last letter or two, it was easier to guess the word before the New York Times took over. That's because the guy who invented the game always seemed to try to make the answer a slightly unique or interesting word. You just had to think, "What would that dude have put in?," and that would usually be the right one. Now it's more random (and a lot less personal), so it's harder to guess.
Haha - Wordle - such an addiction
My wordle streak is intact but success is beginning to oppress with fear of loss. And then, I try to pretend "it's only a game." "Oh sure, and that's why you are so attentive when you end up on line six. You might be a Karen watching someone's mask slip off." And thinking: "why not just lose and get it over with." (Because I wouldn't think I'd lost. I'd know what I did.) Trapped on a wide Sargasso sea.
AVI (1st comment):
There's also:
Bardle - only words (including character names) found in Shakespeare.
Verbdum - Latin words (game is not listed in the language list in the Wikipedia Wordle article).
If any of you are distraught and need a second opinion as to how you should deal with the devastating trauma of losing at Wordle, here's mine:
Shoot yourself.
Looks like I dodged a bullet by not ever getting involved in Wordle or its offspring.
Yancey Ward said...
"Looks like I dodged a bullet by not ever getting involved in Wordle or its offspring."
(Thumbs up emoji)
Wordle is really just luck. Think about it, every guess is a good one, unless you stop using a letter you got right, or in the right position. I lost my first game last week...after two guess I had five out of six letters position correctly, just missing the first. Easy right? Nope, six letters were left that could complete a word. I guessed wrong the next four times.
Wordle is simple and fun, and you can't play it obsessively because there is only one per day. The only way to ruin it is to obsess about an unbroken streak, which is what the Slate article is about.
Here at Meadhouse, we believe the most fun situation is to get it in 6, which we call "skating on thin Wordle ice." It's worth caring enough about your streak that you get a frisson of risk-taking when you go to 6. Endless days of getting it in 3, 4, and 5 — it becomes an ordinary task, like brushing your teeth or putting on your socks.
the only other wordle-like game I play is Quordle. Quordle ropes you in by allowing "practice" games. I find it kind of fascinating how easy it is to reduce your options and how predictably the letters "know" where to go in English words.
In Quordle, I use the same 3 words to get started every time. Maybe I should impose "hard mode" on myself, where each guess has to be a possible answer, based on the clues received so far.
The 3 words I use were suggested by my younger son. Don't know if he saw them suggested elsewhere: chimp, round, slate.
Worldle is more interesting to me as it’s visual.
I like it that you posted this on the day I got my Wordle in one!
I start with “raise” to. Arrow down the vowels
I find the other game, 'Worldle', is much more fun.
Ted: When you're left with several different possibilities for the last letter or two, it was easier to guess the word before the New York Times took over. That's because the guy who invented the game always seemed to try to make the answer a slightly unique or interesting word. You just had to think, "What would that dude have put in?," and that would usually be the right one. Now it's more random (and a lot less personal), so it's harder to guess.
As of today, the NYT has removed five words from the original game's list - AGORA, PUPAL, LYNCH, HARRY, and FIBRE.
Other than removing those five, the NYT site is using the exact same solutions - in the exact same order - as the original game. Tomorrow's answer on the original game will be COMMA, because that was the NYT solution four days ago.
Ann Althouse: The 3 words I use were suggested by my younger son. Don't know if he saw them suggested elsewhere: chimp, round, slate.
I use LIDAR, STONE, and CHUMP. Props to your son for coming up with three more common words that have those same 15 letters (which are the most commonly used 15 letters in the English language)
It's not clear what the goal of Wordle really is.
1)Maximize streak of wins.
2)Minimize average score (in which case, how to score a loss).
3)Some idiosyncratic function of both 1 and 2.
4)Maximize home runs (which for me means hitting it in 2 guesses, but maybe it's the first guess after the mechanical guesses.)
It's pretty clear that win streak is at odds with any other goal.
As I am hype-averse, I easily resisted any temptation to play Wordle.
A mutual friend (upon discovering Wordle) told my wife that I'd probably excel at the game.
I gave in.
I played one game-- in German-- and won. I retired, undefeated, in German "Wortle."
I played one game-- in Spanish-- and won. I retired, undefeated, in Spanish.
At this point, English Wordle would be a letdown.
I enjoy thinking about the strategies more than actually playing the game, just like the baseball stats guys. Of all of them, I think Dordle is the hardest.
Is hard mode even playable in Quordle? A correct full answer in one quadrant might share no letters with another. Or am I not understanding here?
What letters are most common in English is a matter of debate. What is most common in English as a whole is not the same as what is most common in five-letter words. Consider that the common words "I," "you" "the," and he/she/it, we, that, then...throw off the overall total. Even more precisely, one has to figure out what are the most common letters in the Wordle list, and not modify that according to how commonly they are used in everyday text. A rare word's letters are the same as a common one's once it's on the Wordle list. Also, Wordle does not use the forms of plural nouns that are four-letter words with an "s" at the end, nor the verb forms of verbs ending in "s" such as give, gives. (Though you are allowed to guess those to find letters.) That reduces how common "s" is for the game's purposes. S drops from #6 to #8. Taken together, B, Y, and G are thus more common in the gamethan H and M.
Related to the 'loser' angle, you might like the Netflix show ("docu-series") "Losers". Some of them are great!
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