Tag: fact checking

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Oh, My Wordle

Dang it, Heather. You know my HABIT for wordplay far too well. In fact, you HONED in on it like a LASER. Now I can’t even ARISE in the morning without seeing five-letter groups everywhere.

And if that made way too much sense to you, someone’s probably hooked you on Wordle, too.

Yes, my wife got me into the latest word-puzzle craze, which is a little like giving a six-year-old a high-sugar cereal and no supervision. I’m a writer. An actor. A punster. I collect words like they’re going out of style, nerd out on their histories, and revel in the ones that have an extra-neat sound to them, regardless of their meaning. (Isn’t it fun to say “discombobulate?”)

So when Heather invited me in, I was wary. And then cautiously curious. And then hooked.

If you’re new to the latest social media fad, Wordle is a simple game with a simple object: figure out a hidden five-letter word in six guesses or less. Each time you get a letter right, its square glows, green for “yes, it goes here” or yellow for “right letter, wrong place.” Once you crack it, you can show off the pattern of your guesses to your friends, letting you compare how much of a struggle it was without giving away the answer to someone who hasn’t played yet.

It’s weirdly addictive …. “weird” mainly because there’s no way it can eat up your time. You get exactly one word per day.  So you struggle, solve and move on. That’s it. No temptations to play “just one more turn.” No real-time action to make you lose track of time. Heck, you can’t even buy anything to help you out, which I’m sure breaks the Ancient Code of Online Game Developers. (“Thou shalt make thy profit and keep it holy.”)

Sure, the fad will probably cool down eventually. They always do, whether it’s Rubik’s Cube or Angry Birds, reaching a stage where they still hold fans but not the spotlight. But while it lasts, it may just be the game our time needs, and not just because it’s a single-player game in an often-distanced age.

You see, the dirty secret is that Wordle isn’t really about words. It’s about pattern recognition. And these days, that’s a survival skill.

We’re surrounded by information. Claims about politics and society. Assertions about health and safety. Compelling thoughts that seem to fit so well with what we think and feel. Some are genuine. Some are trash. All of them make constant appeals for our time and attention.

It’s easy to just react, just like it’s easy to zone out on a game of Candy Crush or even Tetris (for the old-schoolers in the crowd). After all, time is precious and none of this could be that important, right? But inevitably, some of it will make a difference: for you, your neighbor, the world around you.

And so, at our best, we grapple. We study. We look closer and see what actually makes sense.

Mind you, it’s easy to force a pattern onto circumstances. Conspiracy theorists do it all the time. That’s a different thing entirely, like declaring a Wordle victory with four letters wrong because “I know what the answer really is!” You get so caught up in what an answer should be that you miss the clues to what it is.

So it’s good practice to have a game where you see patterns, but can’t impose them. Where the object is to be aware and find a path that makes sense. Where you can stay interested without growing obsessed.

Each of those is a skill worth building.

In fact, you might even say it’s a useful KNACK.

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A Magical Lesson

“You see a beautiful ballroom, decorated for a feast or party of some kind. Music is playing, but you can’t see from where. In the center of the room, a man and woman dressed in clothes from 300 years ago are dancing, you think you can see through them. What do you do?”

My nephew Gil considered the situation. Then conferred briefly with his mom and Heather. Even for a bold Elven adventurer, this was going to be tricky.

On the other end of the webcam, 1,300 miles away, I smiled. Not the “gotcha” smile of the devious Dungeon Master. But the nostalgic smile of a proud uncle.

A new adventure had truly begun.

My sister likes to say that Gil and I have a lot in common. He’s a big reader on every topic imaginable. He loves good games and bad jokes and weird facts. He even started learning piano after fooling around with the one at our house for the first time.

Now he’s taken another step in the Déjà Vu Chronicles. Gil has discovered fantasy roleplaying, the world of broad imaginations and funny-shaped dice. Not only that, he’s starting at just about the same age I did.

Did someone cast a flashback spell when I wasn’t looking?

My own adventures started in fourth grade, fueled by a love of “The Hobbit” and curiosity about a game I’d seen mentioned in comic books and “E.T.” I quickly fell in love. I mean, I’d already been creating my own stories for fun and this was just the next step, right? (The fact that calculating experience points gave a boost to my math skills – which, frankly, needed all the help they could get – was an unforeseen bonus.)

Gil, likewise, discovered the games in his own reading and wanted to know more. His mom told him “You should really ask Uncle Scott.”

I’m sure she was barely hiding a smile the whole time.

It’s been exciting to see him learn the same lessons I did: the ones about cooperation, creativity, planning and why it’s a really good idea to avoid a room full of green slime. But the most exciting one has come from four words, repeated over and over again.

“I check it out.”

Whether from his reading or his own intuition, Gil has decided that anything could be more than meets the eye. So his character checks for traps. For secret doors. For hidden objects and lurking spiders. If a room the size of a closet holds a spyhole and a single wooden stool, the first words will be “I check out the stool.”

In this day and age, I can’t think of a more valuable reflex to train.

We live in a world where assumptions are easy and conspiracy theories streak across the internet at warp speed. We’ve seen – or been! – the friend who swallowed a story whole because it fit what they already believed, even when 30 seconds on Google would blow it up like the Death Star. After all, why disturb a beautiful theory with the facts?

With so much coming at us, checking it out is vital. And it’s usually not as hard as it sounds. But the hardest step is to realize that something needs checking – that our own assumptions and beliefs might actually be wrong. That requires humility, reflection, and a willingness to learn.

It’s not as glamorous as stubbornly holding your position at all costs and feeling like a hero. But it’s better for all of us in the long run. And if some magic and monsters can help ingrain that in my nephew, then bring on the quest.

It’s adventure time.

Let’s have a ball.

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Elementary, My Dear Auto

Leroy has us on the move at last.

Some of you may remember that our car came to an untimely end last month. That prompted a lot of research for a new vehicle – price, mileage, and all the other crucial factors that go into acquiring a new family chariot. And once we finally made that fateful choice, all our friends wanted to know the same thing.

“So, what are you going to name it?”

Ooh. The big questions.

As I’ve mentioned before, naming a car is not an insignificant decision. We’ve known several in our life from the Battered Blue Buick – christened after a major Kansas hail storm – to the E-Z Bake Oven, which was seemingly designed to magnify heat. Mozart was a Sonata whose life ended too soon, while Harvey Dent was hit in the driveway on its third day with us, temporarily giving it a polished look on one side and a mix of torn metal and a shattered turn signal on the other.

So there’s a bit of history involved. Which is why, as with certain baby naming traditions, we took several days deciding.

It was Mom who put us on the right track, shortly after we’d clarified to a friend that the car was dark brown and not black.

“Well, all I can think of right now is Encyclopedia Brown references because of the color,” she said.

And that’s when it clicked.

Hello, Leroy.

Like all the best names, “Leroy Brown” has multiple meanings. In an odd way, it has a tie to when I first started driving in the early 1990s. One week, the local oldies station was even more predictable than usual, and would play Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” just after school let out, filling the speaker’s with that infectious rhythm.

But Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown is a tie to my childhood. Some of the first books I ever got under the Christmas tree involved the mysteries of Idaville’s greatest boy detective and his friend Sally Kimball. The pattern was always the same – a setup that took five minutes or less, a break at the crucial moment to see if you’d spotted the error or inconsistency that would unravel the case, and then a quick flip to the back of the book to check your answer.

In retrospect, maybe that’s how the seeds of a journalist got planted in my head in the first place. All the key questions were there: did the facts as presented make sense? What was the person really saying? And why did anyone trust Bugs Meany after all this time? (OK, maybe not that last one.)

Call it curiosity. Or skepticism. Or just thinking things through instead of taking them at face value.

By any name, it’s an attitude we still need.

Plenty of dubious claims get made every day, and they’re easier to spread than ever. Most of them are about as transparent as one of Bugs Meany’s schemes – if you bother to take 30 seconds to check. But many people don’t.

Maybe it’s because the person saying it has an important title and a famous name.

Maybe it’s because it was bundled with a cute infographic and a provocative headline.

Maybe it’s just because it seems to confirm what the person already believes – why check what you “know” to be true?

Always check. Always confirm. Even when – no, especially when the claim seems to boost your own side. It’s frustrating when you’re wrong. But it’s downright embarrassing when you’ve committed to it, and a lot harder to pull back from.

If a rolling brown Hyundai helps me keep that in mind, so much the better.

Just as long as it doesn’t end up like the other Leroy Brown.  You know, the one that looked like “a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone.”

Let’s stick to cracking cases – OK?