Who would have thought that a game, whose objective is to guess a five letter word, would have infiltrated the lives of students, teachers, and virtually anybody who owns a phone.
The New York Times’s Wordle has become the new craze.
It works like this: a player gets six tries to guess a five letter word. As the word reveals itself, the tiles flip to tell you whether the letter is in the word or not. If the tile is gray, the letter is not in the word. If the tile is yellow, the letter is in the word, but not in the right place. If the tile is green, then the letter is in the word in the right place. Each day brings a new word that is the same for everyone.
But why has it become so addicting? Is it the rush of joy players get as the tiles flip and turn green? Whatever it may be, students have dedicated a part of their day to figuring out the word. “I play in the morning when I eat my cereal because I like a little game to challenge my mind, and it’s pretty much become a habit for me to do it every day,” junior Raye Weatherford said.
Like any other game, there are little tricks and strategies to get the word in less tries. A common strategy is to always have a starting word with lots of vowels like OCEAN or ADIEU.
Others like to mix it up and start with a random word. “I understand the prominence of vowels. But sometimes I just like a word and go with it. Totally random,” English Teacher Andrea Wooward said.
Fortunately, it has not become much of a distraction in the classrooms. “I don’t think it’s any more of a distraction than anything else that’s been. If anything, it’s a good distraction because it’s problem solving. To me it’s a happy distraction,” Woodward said.
However, Woodward does set some ground rules for playing Wordle in class to avoid giving away today’s answer. “One, it is mandatory that you do not play Wordle on your laptop when it is out for everyone to see. Two, you cannot play Wordle on your phone above your desk – you must always play it under your desk,” Woodward said.
So, did you get Wordle today?