Lori Duff Writes

Like 98% of the English speaking world, I have been playing Wordle.  Wordle, in case you are one of the 2%, or in the event that you are reading this so far in the future that Wordle has faded into obscurity, like pet rocks or sea monkeys, is an online word game, now owned by the New York Times.  You guess a five-letter word and it tells you which letters are right and in the right place, which letters are right but in the wrong place, and which letters aren’t in the word.  Then, based on what you now know, you guess again until you get the word.  You have a total of six tries. 

It’s a lot like the old game Master Mind, which I used to love and played with my mother over and over probably until she wanted to poke out my eyes with the little colored pegs it came with. 

Like everything else, I have a tendency to overthink Wordle.  I do believe, though, that there is some merit to my unsupported thought that word choice matters.  Not in a worldly “this has consequences” kind of way.  It’s not waging war or making life-changing medical decisions.  More in a “what does it say about you as a human” kind of thing. 

For example, the other day the word was “guppy”.  I guessed “puppy” before being told that only uppy was correct, and then I got guppy.  Which is understandable.  Most people encounter and/or think about puppies more than guppies.  But my son has a nice fish tank and his guppies recently had babies, which he talked about at some length.  Does my guess of ‘puppy’ before ‘guppy’ say anything about how much I pay attention to the fish talk from my son?

If I guess ‘shirt’ before ‘skirt’ am I denigrating the female experience in any way?

What does ‘power’ before ‘lower’ mean?  Am I really that competitive?

How about ‘rages’ before ‘pages’ or ‘anger’ before ‘angel’?

Surely this all says something about the way my brain operates. Buzzfeed could probably create some kind of quiz that would tell me which character on the Simpsons I am based on my Wordle choices.  Still, as a predictor of character, it’s more logical than any crease on my palm having any significance.

Today’s word was ‘ghoul’.  The word I guessed before it was ‘shops’, which told me only that the h and o were correct, and there wasn’t any s or p.  How did I jump right to ‘ghoul,’ passing over more neutral words like ‘chose’ or ‘whorl’?  It felt just like a lucky guess, and maybe it was, or maybe I’m being haunted.  Or doing the haunting. 

There’s probably nothing more to it than what I’ve recently watched on television or read. Whichever vocabulary word rears it’s hopeful head to be the Wordle answer likely has nothing to do with anything that the fact that it might fit and I know the word.

But maybe, just maybe….why did I guess ‘fails’ again? 

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Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.