Exercising that blob atop my shoulders (Wordle)

[Jolly Blue Giant]

Just wondering if any of you guys play this game. It's very addicting and a lot of fun and makes you have to think hard for a few seconds

Every morning I play a variety of games to exercise my brain. I play a lot of Sudoku and play against a timer. I can tell if my brain is functioning well when I am in the top 100 of the thousands of people who play the daily game on the same site. I also play games of chess, checkers, hearts, and spider and in the evening do the crossword and crypt-o-quote. I feel it is necessary to regularly exercise my brain and keep dementia from creeping in as I am no spring chicken anymore

With all that said, there is a new mental exercise that is very addicting and I've jumped into playing it regularly and some are calling it the "Game Fad of 2022" and has taken the world by storm. It's called "Wordle"

The problem with it, is that you are only allowed to play one game a day and it only takes a few minutes to solve (assuming you can solve it) then you have to wait until the next day for the next puzzle. However, I have found a site that allows you to play it as often as you like and I'll share that link.

Here's how to play:

You start with any 5 letter word. I usually pick a word with "s" 't" "r" and a couple vowels, but any word works like "horse", "giant", etc.

If you get any letters right, the blocks will turn yellow or green. Wrong letters turn gray. Yellow means the letter is in the word to be solved but in the wrong order. Green means the letter is part of the solution and also in the correct spot of the mystery word. You have an onscreen keyboard to pick your letters and it must be a real word. You get six tries.

Here's a tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnWPXZ6vQB8

Here's Jimmy Fallon who really, really sucks at it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcZWd75Ph4Q

Here's a link to the daily puzzle: https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/

Here's a link if you want to play it more than once a day: http://hellowordl.net/

[DaveBrown74]

Love it. Just tried and got my first one right on the final try. Stressful!

[ozzie]

Yes. My daughter introduced me to it this past weekend. Fun game that makes you think. Very enjoyable but I wish you could play more than once a day!

[DaveBrown74]

Yes. My daughter introduced me to it this past weekend. Fun game that makes you think. Very enjoyable but I wish you could play more than once a day!

That second link provided in the OP allows you to do that.

[LennG]

Thanks for the link.

To be honest, I am usually horrible with word games. I can stare at a Jumble all day and never be able to arrange the letters to form the right word. Now give me a math problem and I'm off.

That said, I did it in 4 tries.

Does everyone get the same word each day?

[Jolly Blue Giant]

Thanks for the link.

To be honest, I am usually horrible with word games. I can stare at a Jumble all day and never be able to arrange the letters to form the right word. Now give me a math problem and I'm off.

That said, I did it in 4 tries.

Does everyone get the same word each day?

For the daily Wordle, yes - same word for everyone. That way peaople and friends can compare notes (and brag if it fits) on how long it took you and how many tries. Speaking of bragging, I've figured out the word in 2 tries a couple of times. Usually takes 4 or 5 tries and a couple times I completely missed it.

I play the Daily, but also play the one that you can play as often as you'd like on a different site as I posted in my first post. But here it is again if you missed it: http://hellowordl.net/

[DaveBrown74]

Very fun game. I agree that it's a nice little brain exercise. I've done about 8 or 9 of them, and I showed my 14 year old daughter, and she is also a fan. I'm happy to say that so far I have not missed any, but they are generally taking me 4-6 tries. I have gotten two on the sixth try, so I'll certainly miss one soon. I have not gotten one in two tries and I think I only got one in three tries once, and that one was pretty lucky.

What is your way of attacking these things? This is how I have been approaching it:

First try: Just pick a word with a lot of reasonably common letters like "paste" or "boats"

Second try: Still have to be creative here. Just try to get something that fits the clues, but using all new letters, again favoring common letters.

Third try: By now, hopefully you've got at least one green to work with. You should also have a decent number of eliminated letters. Since most of the eliminated letters will be very common ones, depending on how many yellows and greens you have, you can start to piece together some possibilities. You also may have a better idea of where the yellows should be located as you may have two different wrong spots for the same yellow letter.

Fourth try: In this round you should be taking a genuine stab at the word with some sort of confidence. There aren't many letters left that that aren't part of the word, so it's just a matter of thinking about what the word could possibly be given the clues. In this round, you're probably going to have to start thinking about random letters like J, W, X, etc.

Fifth and sixth tries: If you haven't gotten it by now you should be really in trial and error mode with very few possibilities and it's just a matter of process of elimination. I have seen some annoyingly weird words like "oxide", so they'll definitely throw some tricky ones at you.


Jolly, if you have any tips I'd be happy to hear them!

[ozzie]

That second link provided in the OP allows you to do that.

Aahhhh, thank you

[DaveBrown74]

Got today on the third try. My second guess was a very fortunate one.

There is for sure a lot of luck in the first two rounds in this game. I went from having one green in the first round to four in the second round. So the third pick was easy.

I read that it's best to start with a vowel-heavy words in the first round, which makes sense. If you hit a vowel or two early you have a bit more of a tangible base, since there are so few vowels compared to consonants.

[Jolly Blue Giant]

Very fun game. I agree that it's a nice little brain exercise. I've done about 8 or 9 of them, and I showed my 14 year old daughter, and she is also a fan. I'm happy to say that so far I have not missed any, but they are generally taking me 4-6 tries. I have gotten two on the sixth try, so I'll certainly miss one soon. I have not gotten one in two tries and I think I only got one in three tries once, and that one was pretty lucky.

What is your way of attacking these things? This is how I have been approaching it:

First try: Just pick a word with a lot of reasonably common letters like "paste" or "boats"

Second try: Still have to be creative here. Just try to get something that fits the clues, but using all new letters, again favoring common letters.

Third try: By now, hopefully you've got at least one green to work with. You should also have a decent number of eliminated letters. Since most of the eliminated letters will be very common ones, depending on how many yellows and greens you have, you can start to piece together some possibilities. You also may have a better idea of where the yellows should be located as you may have two different wrong spots for the same yellow letter.

Fourth try: In this round you should be taking a genuine stab at the word with some sort of confidence. There aren't many letters left that that aren't part of the word, so it's just a matter of thinking about what the word could possibly be given the clues. In this round, you're probably going to have to start thinking about random letters like J, W, X, etc.

Fifth and sixth tries: If you haven't gotten it by now you should be really in trial and error mode with very few possibilities and it's just a matter of process of elimination. I have seen some annoyingly weird words like "oxide", so they'll definitely throw some tricky ones at you.


Jolly, if you have any tips I'd be happy to hear them!

I don't really have any tricks. I started playing this game several days ago and now I'm hooked. When I'm bored I click over and play a game and each time I think I've mastered it, it throws me a doozy. No tricks that I have other than to start a word that contains a variety of common letters "rates", "trade", "sauce", "horse", etc.

Anytime the word has an "X" or a "Z" in it, it tends to be much tougher - especially that "X". If you could put in letters that didn't make up a real word, there'd be some opportunities to solve some of the tougher ones, but the game doesn't allow that.

Anyway, glad you like the game. I liked it so much I felt I just had to share on this board. Ric

[Jolly Blue Giant]

Here's a couple that I almost lost that made me laugh

[Jolly Blue Giant]

If you notice the slide bar at the top of the page (of the unlimited play site), you can slide the bar for more or less letters. I stick with 5, but have tried others. 5 seems to be the most fun...for now anyway

[Ed Vette]

Thanks for the heads up and all the information.

[LennG]

Got today on the third try. My second guess was a very fortunate one.

There is for sure a lot of luck in the first two rounds in this game. I went from having one green in the first round to four in the second round. So the third pick was easy.

I read that it's best to start with a vowel-heavy words in the first round, which makes sense. If you hit a vowel or two early you have a bit more of a tangible base, since there are so few vowels compared to consonants.

Took me till the last line today. I had 4 of the letters but just couldn't arrange them right.

[T200]

Thanks for posting this, JBG.

My wife and I heard about it on NPR the other morning. And then I see your thread. Figured I'd give it a shot; sent it to our kids as well. Looks like we have a little family challenge