If you haven’t heard, there is this game called Wordle. It seems to be the next pandemic life obsession. Started by a guy in Britain who programmed a simple word game for his word game loving girlfriend, he decided to share it with the world and it has taken off! It is free at the moment although the New York Times has bought it so we shall see how long that last. It is super simple. You are presented with a screen that shows you have six chances to guess a five letter word. In each guess, if the word has letters that you have guessed but in the wrong place, the letter turns yellow. If you have guessed a letter in the right place, it turns green. If the letter isn’t in the word and you used it, it goes grey.

There is an unwritten code of conduct that even though you can share your results, you don’t share what the answer is. Our Facebook pages are full of yellow and green squares shared by people to show how many guesses it took to guess the word. At the end of your six guesses, if you haven’t figured out the word, the page tells you.

There is just one puzzle per day. It isn’t a time suck. Of course there are many many spin offs now….gay wordle, swear wordle, German wordle, etc etc etc. But there is nothing like the original.

And we play it in our house but Ana and I do it a bit differently.

I play wordle as one of the first things I do in the day. I start with the word, “tears.” This gives me clues in two very popular vowels and a few well used consonants. I guess quickly and not so carefully. I like to type in my answers rather than a touch screen. I sometimes, if its a hard one, use letters that I know aren’t in it to get to a quicker answer and to more unused letters. I am happy if I get the word by the end of the six guesses and when I guessed one in two guesses, I was elated. It set a positive tone the entire day. I walked around like I knew some stuff that day. I have run out guesses just twice but you win some, you lose some in my opinion. If you looked at my stats I guess most of the words in 4 guesses….like today.

Ana is a different kind of wordle player. She is calcuated and strategic. She aims to get the word in the least possible guesses. It isn’t usually enough for her to just get it and its a big bonus if she can get it in less guesses than me (which is most days). She uses words I never even think of and most of the time it serves her well. She guesses one word and then really gets strategic about it. She always uses a different first word unlike my tried and true method. She likes a touch screen rather than typing so she doesn’t forget which letters have gone grey. She would never use a letter she knew wasn’t in the word.

A couple of times we have played at the same time to see who could get it faster…I whiz through while she always gets it in less guesses. She doesn’t treat it like a speed match but a more calculated one so now we play at different times most often but we always compare our results. She spends her day solving puzzles as her work so it seems to fit right in while its a bit of an outside activity for me who rarely likes word puzzles.

Neither one of us shares on social media. No one needs to see besides us how we got there. But I love that people feel the need to share and connect in this way. It also seems to be a worldwide thing. But yes, we are both playing and enjoy and surprisingly it really goes to show how we are different and alike.

Are you playing?