There is a new game that is sweeping the internet called 'Wordle.' For those who have yet to experience the game, let me give you a brief overview. You are presented with a five letter word, possibly without any letter repeated. You have six guesses to figure out what the word is. With each guess, you are given hints about how right your guess was. A letter highlighted in yellow means the letter is in the answer word, but in the wrong position. A green letter means that the letter is in the word and in the right position. A grey letter means that it isn't in the word at all. A good strategy is to choose a word with many vowels as your first guess: arise, arose, irate, radio, ratio. Words with an 'e' are slightly better than those without. Unless your first guess had multiple correct letters, your second word should feature a vowel not it your first and as many different consonants as possible, such as 'think' after 'arose' or 'thong' after 'irate.' After the first two words, you should know which vowels appear in the answer, and probably at least one consonant. For my first time, I had 'arose' as my first choice, with a yellow 'a.' My second word was 'thick,' with the 't' in the right position. From this, I know that 'a' was probably the only vowel, as there aren't many five-letter words starting with 't' that include both 'a' and 'u.' My third word was 'twang.' I wanted a word with 'n' as it was the most frequent letter I hadn't tested yet. The 't' was still in green, naturally, but the 'a,' 'n,' and 'g' were all in yellow. I immediately decided that 'a' was the second letter, based that it probably wasn't the last letter, the only other position left. Also, 'n' and 'g' were probably third and fourth based on letter combinations. This left a vowel for the last position, but it couldn't be one I used before. The only word that fit was 'tangy,' which was the correct answer. Similar sites have since popped up with copycat games. This is reasonable, as 'Wordle' is based on a word game that has been around for years. I believe it is called 'Lingo' among other names. The premise is very similar. Two people each choose a five-letter word, frequently from a certain category. Each player then guests a word and the other player then tells the first if any letters were in the word and if any were in the right position. Players only have to give the number of letter; they don't have to specify which letters were correct. The game ends when a player guesses the right word. There are other puzzles for one that are similar as well. One goes by 'Letter Logic.' In this game, you are given four four-letter words, each with one letter that is in the answer, but none are in the correct position. You are then given three more words, each with two letters that match the answer word. One letter is in the correct position, but the other is not. With this information, one can determine the answer word. Another puzzle goes by 'Secret Word.' Here, you are given clues to a list of five-letter words. Among the clue answers, each letter appears at least twice. The first letters of the clues provide an additional clue to the final answer, another five-letter word. Each clue word is followed by a number between zero and three telling you how many of the letters are in the final word. This is enough information the guess the final answer, even without knowing anything about letter positions. I have yet to go back to the site for more attempts, as I slightly prefer the paper and pencil versions. Also, the only benefit of playing is posting your record on Twitter. Since I'm not a member of the platform, this benefit is lost on me, so why play unless I discover further benefits or challenges. Note, today's post's title is based on the Cameo song "Word Up," a longtime favorite of mine.
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