Why I Am Fine With Wordle

Wordle

I have been avoiding Wordle for the same reason I avoided Led Zeppelin as a teenager, everybody was into them and I just didn’t want to be another face in the crowd. I suppose that is just the way I am , I seldom go with the flow which means i am often seen as weird or unconventional resulting in people being either frightened of me or shunning me.

Board Games

I have always been a fan of board games, though I have forgotten the last time I played a real board game. My favourite is Backgammon which is simple but has so many permutations generated by the throw of a dice.

I like Chess but that can be daunting for many people because of the number of moves. I do remember Battle Chess appearing on computers with its animated pieces which was great fun.

Then there is Draughts (Checkers or Chequers) across the Atlantic, again simple but with a lot of permutations and enjoyable to play.

The main word game I played was the excellent Scrabble though there were many arguments about whether words were valid.

Games on Facebook

With Facebook, there were a couple of incarnations of Scrabble which were good to play, but then they became slow and didn’t work and finally disappeared but I made a lot of friends through playing on those platforms.

The substitute one was Words With Friends but when I first got into it on Facebook the advertising that blocked you from playing just made it impossible to play. I restarted using it on my phone but it was so power-hungry with pop-up advertising videos that I had to ditch that as well.

So Wordle

I finally succumbed and installed this, well it is browser-based rather than an app, but there are a lot of clones out there. It has been bought by the New York Times and lots of people are concerned they will lose their history or have to pay for it. What I think will happen is that it will start to carry advertising, and I am OK with that as long as it doesn’t stop you from playing.

Here are the rules of Wordle, extremely simple and a new word is released each day for you to guess.

I love the minimalist simplicity of it, plus the fact you are not playing against anyone, just the system, and you have to wait a day between plays.

There are apparently archives and nonstop clones, but I love the clean feel of one word a day.

I am a minimalist myself although I can talk forever without stopping. When I write technical documents and stories they are full of white space because I believe that makes people believe they are going into an easy read and therefore you can get a lot across to your readers because when they see white space they think they can complete reading the document fairly quickly.

I have played Wordle three times and not cheated at all although there are a million word solvers available on the internet.

I love the way it makes my brain think about a relatively simple problem and I have managed to solve it each time although the last one took me six tries. It is a strategy game, but love that it is just you playing and everyone gets the same word each day.

If you haven’t tried it you can find it on the link below. At the moment there are no adverts but as I said previously I think that will change, just from the point that things have to be paid for.

I like it, give it a try, you might too.