Word and Wordle

If you are on social media, you need no introduction to Wordle.

It’s a word game combining hangman and Scrabble to identify a word of the day. You get 6 guesses. Every time you guess, you learn if you have correct letters and if they’re in the right spot.

The brilliance of the game is that everyone is playing each day to find the same word. When a friend posts on Facebook or Twitter, they show their results in code. Wordle 219 4/6 (as in, how many guesses out of 6) with a picture.

The picture shows the guesses without using letters. The image uses green (correct letter in the correct spot) and yellow blocks (correct letter, wrong spot) to show how the person finally got to the answer without giving away the word or any of the letters to people who haven’t played. 

On the very rare occasion, someone will guess the word on the first or second try (I’ve only succeeded on my 2^nd try once!)  My friends often share their strategies and which words they try first.  

I learned about Wordle because of friends posting their coded score three weeks ago. I have played every day since!

I appreciate that there’s only one Wordle a day—although imitators keep popping up, like Byrdle, which is a choral musical parody named for Renaissance composer William Byrd. All answers have something to do with choral music, including proper nouns like ZADOK (a piece written by Handel) or DYSON (a 20th-century composer)! There are others… and I’m sure more will come.

The creator of the original, Josh Wardle, maintains that he wants to keep it to a daily puzzle. It’s a free game and he has a day job. He wasn’t looking to turn this into a money-making scheme—although others have already tried to mimic his concept and monetize it.

Which isn’t a huge surprise, really. It’s hard to find anything in our consumer-driven world that isn’t looking to make a buck. It’s refreshing that this new 2022 fad is about the word and having fun.  

Wordle is one of the first things I do to start my day, alongside my daily devotions that I read on my phone.

My Wordle and devotion accomplish similar goals. I read a brief scripture passage and a 200-word reflection. It gets my mind centered and focused. It helps me think about God at the beginning of my day and often, I draw from that devotion throughout my day, or sometimes I’m reminded of it a few days later.

It’s an important habit that I’ve re-developed.

Since the pandemic began, I’ve needed to be intentional with reading my devotions because many of the familiar spiritual patterns changed. Habits were affected.

I’m reminded about the things I consume. This might be the food I eat or the things I devote my time to. The little things can be building blocks for a healthy body, mind, and soul.

If adding the Wordle to your daily routine was easy, how is your spiritual soul doing? Are you consuming things that bring you closer to God or deepening your spirituality?

You might be surprised how much peace you will find by re-connecting or exploring this important relationship.

It could be just the answer to the riddle you’ve been seeking.

Pastor John wrote this article for the January 27, 2022 issue of the Forest Lake Times