Nearly every day, I do the Wordle™ puzzle. I tried to quit once, but my wife, Sue, and our daughter, Sara, told me I had to stay in the group. Each day, after we complete the puzzle, we text our results to each other. I don’t know why this is a thing, but it is. Millions of people do it this way every day. I’ve been told it builds community, so I keep doing it.
Let me explain to those who need to learn what Wordle is. It is a word game from the New York Times. You have six guesses to figure out a five-letter word. With each guess, they tell you which letter you have in the correct place and which letters are correct but in the wrong spot. It is like the old game of Mastermind ™ but using letters instead of colors.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s fun to play. My attempt to quit wasn’t because it was a bad game. I was trying to get one less thing to do every day. I was unwilling to stop showering or brushing my teeth, so I thought a harmless thing to quit would be Wordle. As I said above, I was convinced I was wrong. (Don’t worry; I chose to give up nothing; I am still on top of my hygiene).
The other day, the word was “SHAPE.” I got it in two guesses, which is excellent for those who don’t play. If you have gotten it in two guesses, you look good when you share your results with your group. My first guess was “THEIR.”
When I shared my results, I thought they would be impressed with me. But my wife, Sue, who starts each day by guessing SHARE, will also get it in two guesses because she will be only one letter off. Later in the day, when she shared her results, it said it took her six guesses, meaning she nearly didn’t get it.
How could it be? She was only one letter off, which took her an extra four tries. (SHADE, SHAKE, SHAME, and SHAVE)
It was a quick reminder of the adage: an easy question is one you know the answer to, and a hard question is one you don’t.
We have all been made to feel foolish by someone because we didn’t know something they consider obvious. You know the look you get from a fisherman when you make it known you don’t know a Muskie from a Northern or the look from a baseball fan who talks about the hot corner and sees you are clueless?
It works in reverse. Often, we consider things we know to be common knowledge and, to put it bluntly, the people who don’t know the same things we know to be stupid.
Treating others the way we want to be treated is to respect others. Thinking that people who don’t know what we know are less than us is disrespectful. Thinking they would be better if they only knew what I know is disrespectful.
My issue with assuming my wife would get Wordle in two guesses, just like me, reflected my ignorance. I could only think of one answer for what would go in the blank SHA_E. She could come up with four, in part because she needed to come up with more ideas.
The other lesson is that you tend to stop thinking once you devise a solution. I didn’t need additional answers because my first guesses worked. The same is true for Sue. Although she was out of guesses, she hadn’t used SHALE. If she had, she wouldn’t have solved the puzzle. Frustrating.
In the Wordle game, you stop when you have solved the puzzle, but in life, at times, it is best to consider all your options before knowing you are done. For example, had Sue guessed MOVED*, she could have eliminated three of her guesses and done it earlier.
Today’s word was BLARE. I got in three guesses after guessing THEIR and BRAKE. Sue took four because she got more right on the first try, so her thinking was blocked because of the limits on her possibilities. Don’t think that I am picking on my wife. I do the same thing often, and our roles will likely be reversed in the next few days.
I’m glad I didn’t quit. The game has taught me a bit beyond expanding my vocabulary. I will assume others are not dumber than I am, just more intelligent in different ways. I will also not limit myself when thinking up possible solutions.
*(Note: Sue and I use the “hard rules setting,” so once you have a clue, you have to use it. She could not guess MOVED, but I needed to make a point.)