5 Lessons from that 5-Letter Word Game
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Hoo boy. It’s been a week.
There’s a bit from The West Wing I’m thinking about:
“CJ, between friends… is the water over your head?”
“No, the water is exactly at my head.”
The water is exactly at my head.
And when it is, there’s only one alternative:
the next right thing.
At some point each day, for the past 29 days, the “next right thing” for me has been Wordle. Sometimes it’s the middle of the night, when I’m trying to settle my mind and go back to sleep. Or in the pause between meetings. Or during the morning… much better than diving right into the news.
It’s fine for fun things to just be fun. But Wordle has been self-comfort and self-care too. Here are five reasons I love Wordle and how it’s giving me perspective on life lately.
1. Boundaries can be comforting. I know I’m not alone in this, but one of my favorite things about Wordle is that it provides one puzzle a day and then you’re done. There are knockoff games that allow unlimited play–Robert also likes Nerdle, the math puzzle game–but I haven’t even investigated them. In a “more is better” world, there’s relief in knowing this word game can’t take over my life. It’s the chocolate truffle, not the “share size” bag of M&Ms you polish off yourself.
2. It’s not a race. Thank you, Josh Wardle, for not creating a timed game. While there are limitations to gameplay (you only get six guesses), you can take your time, even putting the game down and coming back to it. It feels rare and precious to have a low-stress diversion that allows me to set the pace, that takes as long as it takes.
3. Wholesome connections are a gift. My teens play Wordle. So does my mother. I’m not on social media much, so I have no idea whether people are still sharing their Wordle scores. (Probably not… Wordle is so passé and uncool that the **New York Times** owns it now, for heaven’s sake.) Still, it’s fun for my family to have something we share each day. Connections matter (and in the case of this harrowing story, apparently Wordle saves lives?!?).
4. Life is full of patterns AND unpredictability. Most Wordle solutions begin with a consonant–except the ones that don’t (IRONY). It’s unusual for a letter to be repeated in the same word–but occasionally it happens (AWAKE). After playing Wordle for a while, you start to see trends and guiding principles that allow you to make educated guesses… but there’s also enough novelty to keep things from getting boring.
5. Failure is feedback. It’s satisfying to see those yellow and green boxes flip over to indicate a correct letter, and a bummer to have a row of gray instead. But the wrong guesses are also vital information that helps you solve the game: that’s 5 fewer letters out of 26 that you need to worry about. I wish failure weren’t such a common teacher in life, but it is.
What’s one of your “next right things” lately, and what are 5 things you love about it? I’d love to hear.
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