By now you have seen Wordle on social media. You have also seen brands doing their best to try and kill Wordle by making the absolute worst posts using the color blocks. However, there are things you may not know about Wordle, and they could reveal more about your character than you want to believe.
If you haven’t Wordle’d yet, here is a quick rundown.
Each day you can start a new Worlde with six chances to guess a five-letter word. With every subsequent guess the game will tell you if you got the correct letters in the right spot (green squares), if you picked the the right letters but in the wrong spot (yellow squares) and also letters are not in the word at all (gray squares).
For instance, if the word is WRUNG and you open your guess with TRASH, you will get gray-green-gray-gray-gray squares, showing you that the word has an R, in the right spot, and that you can eliminate other prominent letters, T A S H. Which is does for you on the in-game keypad.
If your second guess to WRONG, then you will get green-green-grey-green-green and it is a simple figuring of which vowel you need and then getting it correct. A new game is released every day, and yes everybody is playing the same one at the same time, so judge your friends’ intelligence accordingly.
Now, there are several things you may NOT know about Worlde, and what I believe those things say about you.
Everyone starts on ‘easy’ … and you may not know any better… but there is also a ‘hard’ mode for the game. You have to switch between the two in settings. The difference between them is that on ‘hard’, you have to use the letters that were already lit up.
(Honestly, I do this anyways even though I am not on hard mode, so I may hit the toggle.)
This setting means that, if we go back to the last example, you guessed TRASH and you got the R correct, then your next guess can not be MELON to try and gain more letters, you must place that R. Also, if you are one of those that post results after playing hard mode, they appear with a little asterisk. “This person played on HARD MODE,” the game announces it to the world. Really, this becomes the Wordle humblebrag. And I am for it.
You can also change the settings to ‘hard’ and de-activate the announcement that you are playing on hard. (Not sure why you would do that) This setting is probably much less rewarding than announcing you are playing on ‘hard’ but it also can be one of those things that you know they don’t know… and your “3” on hard Wordle is better than your idiot friend getting a “6” on easy. Losers.
Once you get your settings, you then move to strategy.
If you stay on easy, then you go do whatever you like. You can go from TRASH to MELON and only risk knowing that MELON is not the answer, if it has a green R, but you also could land a couple of other letters.
This, to me, seams like a pretty silly plan. You want to know you can actually the correct answer… so tossing out an answer that doesn’t have the known letter in it is stupid. Supposedly, in theory, that going from TRASH to POLEN, you now know that R is in and N is correct, but in the wrong place… and you have no chance of winning on the second guess. That is stupid. Going from TRASH to WRONG gets you four letters and you are way closer. Do this.
Also, how you start will say a lot about you.
Many people will look for high volume words every day. Trying to get the Wheel of Fortune ‘R S T L N E’ in there, or similar. TRASH. CARTS. TRAMS. SCRAM. … you are hitting a bunch of common words and, in theory, giving yourself a better chance than starting the day with KINKY…
Find your own level but know that there has to be some Psych 101 involved.
