Tag: word games

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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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Puzzling it Out

Missy bent over the magazine, sharpened pencil at the ready. The point descended to circle one letter … then another … then one more.

She looked up from the penciled rings, her hundred-watt smile beaming. Just letters for now, no full words. But a New York Times crossword champion couldn’t have been prouder.

“Look!” she declared.

Despite all its other epochal moments, January 2017 will go down in history for Chez Rochat as the moment that Missy discovered Heather’s puzzle magazines. My wife Heather has long loved mind-benders of all kinds, from crosswords to sudoku to logic problems. Since her multiple sclerosis diagnosis two years ago, they’ve become not just a recreation but also a weapon to push back against the occasional MS “brain fog.”

Our disabled ward Missy, for her part, has always enjoyed more tactile challenges, like board puzzles, shape balls and simple jigsaws. But she’s never met a magazine she didn’t want to explore, whether to search for classic cars and pictures of fancy shoes or to disassemble for a spur-of-the-moment collage. And at a moment of Missy curiosity, Heather saw an opportunity.

Word searches and other letter jumbles are the current field of battle – anything Missy can peruse to track down a single letter, like finding where an “M” is or an “S.” It’s not quite the sort of play that the original puzzle-maker expected, perhaps, but it’s doing its job: sharpening a mind and challenging it to learn more.

Curiosity is a powerful thing once inflamed.

That’s something known by any scientist, any journalist, any parent of a 6-year-old. But somehow it still manages to surprise politicians. Even in its mildest forms, the nation’s curiosity can turn any offhand remark into a performance review, often pushing aside whatever message the elected official had hoped to promote.

And if that official is actually trying to hide something, or to cut off information, or to pre-empt debate? That’s when curiosity gets married to stubbornness.

Not always, I admit. People want to be right, and the desire to “mostly say hooray for our side” as Buffalo Springfield put it, can include a willingness to excuse behaviors and ignore inconvenient facts. But we also hate to hear words like “No,” “shut up,” and “You don’t need to know that.”

That becomes a challenge.

Ban a book and not only will it draw defenders, it’ll become a bestseller.

Cover up the truths behind a “third-rate burglary” and it becomes two years of Washington Post headlines, culminating in the first-ever presidential resignation.

Forbid someone to speak to the press officially and they’ll find a way to do it unofficially – often becoming more prominent and more embarrassing than if they’d been left to themselves.

Smart politicians learn this quickly. They learn that concealment and misrepresentation become their own stories, that open channels give you an opportunity to manage your message, that barriers don’t protect you but instead cut you off from any control.

The others? They learn what happens when you squeeze a sponge. The tighter you exert your grip, the more it leaks.

That mix of curiosity and stubbornness is woven tightly into this country’s fabric. It can be infuriating – but it’s also our national glory. Short of outright repression, it means no leader will ever go completely unchallenged. And none ever should, however popular they may be.

We want to know. We want to see. And given the slightest opportunity, we’ll find what we’re looking for.

Even if it’s as simple as an M-for-Missy.