My First Game of WORDLE by Scott Smith

The on-line word game Wordle, by the New York Times

You all know what WORDLE is, the online word game now owned by the NYT (New York Times) where you guess at a five-letter word, with six guesses allowed. As you guess correct vowels and consonants, the game helps you out by showing you if a certain vowel or consonant is in the hidden word, and in some cases the game will show you if the vowel or consonant is in the correct position in the hidden word. This game has been all the rage for what, 4-5 years now? The interweb says it started in October of 2021. During the pandemic. Makes sense. What else were we going to do? Remember the pandemic? That was weird? That sucked soooo bad. Holy cow did it suck. What? As Donald Trump would say: "Thanks a lot Joe Biden!" After all, it was Biden who first ate the rotten bat meat in China, and brought the germs back to the western world, right? Thanks Joe Biden.

For years, I've heard people at work, people at home, people at the coffee shop, talk about WORDLE, but I never have tried it myself. I haven't dared. I've always been afraid to try it. See, I am a smart guy I like to think. I have a law degree and spend all my days writing and reading complex material. So you would think a word game would be natural for me, right? Wrong. I've always been terrible at word games like SCRABBLE and WORDS WITH FRIENDS. When I play SCRABBLE the only words I can get are words like THE, TO, and DIK. The longest word I've ever scored in SCRABBLE is COWMILK, which isn't even a word I guess. Put me under pressure with a word game, put me on a clock, put me in competition with someone else, my mind freezes up and I have all the English vocabulary of a dog. I don't know why this happens but I avoid situations that might trigger this fright. Thus, I have avoided WORDLE for years.

No more! Last night on a whim I went to a tarot card reader on 300 South in Salt Lake City. She told me I needed to try hard things or I would be cornered by the hard things I had never tried. I was confused by her words. I do lots of hard things. I have stage IV lung cancer and have faced my mortality and treatments bravely for more than two years now. I've lost both my parents and my step-mom recently, and faced their final illnesses and their deaths with courage and faith.

I racked my brain. What was it I was withholding from myself? Well I've never been parasailing. I've never ridden a bullet bike on the freeway. I've never been on Naked & Afraid. I've never signed up for an MMA match. I've never intentionally pooped my pants in the middle of a crowded movie theater. I've never jumped into an open manhole. Could this be what the sorceress was getting at? Did I need to do things that were outright dangerous?

No, that can't be right. Most people don't fight in the MMA, most people don't jump into manholes. And so on. It must be that she was referring to something more specific of me, something I was afraid of, something that didn't make sense to be afraid of. I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and realized that she was telling me I needed to play WORDLE. When I came to this realization I broke out in a cold sweat, my armpits filling up with clammy grey moisture, my forehead dripping gobs of saltwater down my eyes and nose. I'm so fearful of these word games!

Finally, after several hours of holding myself like a mother its baby, after several hours of self-soothing and two Benadryl tablets, my mind finally slowed down. I decided I would, I could, try WORDLE. I CAN DO HARD THINGS! I walked down the street from our condo to a coffee shop, somewhere I could concentrate and have a good chance of winning at WORDLE.

I prepare emotionally and spiritually to begin my first ever game of WORDLE

I open up the NYT app on my laptop and click on the WORDLE icon. Deep breaths. Tight colon. The game opens. I ponder the game for fifteen minutes. Apparently, I need to select a starter word, a starter five-letter word. I have heard so many people speak about this! The strategy designed to identify the largest number of vowels and consonants, to give the player a leg-up in guessing the word within the appropriate number of tries. One friend at work talks always about using ADIEU as the starter because it has four vowels. Another friend swears ARISE is better because it adds in two popular consonants. The word TEARS is good, too, says Brent at work, two vowels and three consonants.

My mind goes blank. I think of the word BARF, but that has only four letters. I am tempted to type in ARISE, but If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it my own way, I'm not going to steal another person's starter word. I have to do this my own way, my own flavor. Plus I'm hoping to get better at these words games, so I need to be honest, genuine, and do it on my own. I'm not going to cheat, not going to ask for help or hints, I'm not going to get on the internet in advance to find out what today's answer is. I'm going to do the work of learning this game and getting better at it, and facing my fears.

So what word to use?

I'm getting anxious. My mind is dry and hard. See, this is why I don't play these games. I'm a writer, I write all day, but put me on the spot and I can't think of the right thing to say. I've got to come up with something, got to come up with a five-letter word. Ideally one that would have one or two vowels.

At the coffee shop, I look out the window. Big garbage cans outside, overflowing with sacks of trash and cardboard. People walking to the bar next door. A barber shop across the way. A couple walking their dog. Rashly, I type in the word:

PUPPY

and hit enter. I feel proud of myself, as PUPPY has two vowels (if you include the Y) and the well-used consonant P. PUPPY surely is one of the more clever starter words: if the secret word is PROUD or PLUGS or PRIDE or PLANT, surely using the starter word PUPPY will be better than using a word like ARISE or ADIEU. If the secret word is POPPY or PAPPY or PIPPY or PEPPY, I'll get it in only two tries!

I wait for the game to respond. Deep breaths, tight colon.

The game gives me back a green P in the first space, meaning the word definitely starts with P!!!

The third space is also a green P, meaning the word has P in the third position as well!

So ... PXPXX where X are the unknown letters. Not bad! Two letters in the right place on the first try. I'm a natural! And PUPPY is indeed a great starter word!

I think for a while ... I remember a vacation my wife and I went on to Rome, I remember visiting the Vatican.

I type in PAPAL.

Again, the game responds, the same as before, with a green P in the first and third position, like this ... PXPXX.

This is upsetting ... my second entry didn't reveal additional vowels or consonants beyond the first guess. I'm horrible at this game! I'm going to fail! I'm super anxious, sweaty.

Upset, I type in the word:

SHITS

Take that NYT editors! Miraculously, the game converts the final S to a green S, showing me that the final letter in fifth position is definitely an S. What luck I have. Three letters in correcrt position!

So now I have ...

PXPXS

I remember being a kid, helping my dad install sprinklers in the front yard. Dad is so wise, so patient. He carefully moves everything into place, uses super sticky glue to glue a corner onto a long pipe. How does he know how to do this? Was there a class? Did his father teach him?

Excitedly I type in the word PIPES! Surely this is the answer!

Almost, so close! The game turns the E in fourth position green. We are almost there! Now I have the word:

PXPES

And two guesses still to go! Am I a natural or what? Was I born for this game? Maybe I am the smartest person to ever play this silly game? Should I have been a codebreaker during WWII?

Now more than anything, I need to be careful, deliberate, like the Germans every time they start a world war for no reason. I need to be that careful, for although I still have two guesses, I have only two guesses, and I'm sure the game will show me no mercy if I screw up.

Surely the NYT editors of this game are geniuses, surely the word I'm guessing at is super rare, super clever. After all, all the people I've overheard talking about WORDLE talk about how difficult it is at times to get the secret word correctly. Sometimes it's a word they've never heard of, or rarely use. I remember overhearing a colleague talking about the word COYLY being the final word, and how impossible it was to guess. Most people at work agreed that one had messed them up bad, wrecked their WORDLE streaks in a bad way.

I let my mind wander upon and around and over PXPES, try to let my mind roam freely like an AI algorithm, letting it fill in the blank X however it will, and I tell it to try to find something unusual, unique.

At last, it comes to me like lightning came to Franklin! I'm in eleventh grade biology class, our teacher Mr. Schluppe is lecturing us about insects. He loves loves LOVES talking about metamorphosis. He's always comparing insects to us teenagers, he says that we ourselves, during high school, are going through puberty, that we ourselves are undergoing our own metamorphosis.

I close my eyes, imagine the classroom, focus on his words. He keeps using the word PUPA. A pupa is the insect at the in-between stage, between larva and adult. A PUPA. Yes! That must be it.

But PUPA has only four letters and my word must have an E, not an A, in fourth position.

But PUPA is singular! What is the plural of PUPA? It must be PUPES, right? Yes, that's right!!!

Quickly, speedily, without thinking, I enter PUPES into WORDLE. Surely this is correct, surely this is right! Surely I have guessed at the weird word the NYT editors have disguised so well until now.

Wrong!

The game returns the same as before, PXPES. I'm no closer to the actual word than I was one guess ago. Only one guess to go! What could the word be? It's not PUPES, it's not PIPES, it's not SHITS, it's not PAPAL, it's not PUPPY. What could it be???

At this point I'm tempted to get on the internet and type: "today's WORDLE." I can't afford to lose this first game of WORDLE. If I do, the anxiety around word games will only grow stronger. This is so embarrassing. Whatever happens, I'll need to keep it to myself if I lose. If I win, sure, maybe I brag. But if I lose, no one must know.

I think back to my earlier guess PAPAL. That was a great guess, after all. And maybe it wasn't that far from being correct. I think back to when Kim and I visited the Vatican. The tour guide, a frenzied Italian woman, talks constantly. What is she saying? She is saying that "pope" comes from "papa" or "pappa." In French, "pope" is "pape" or "le pape." Could this be the secret word? Well, no, it has only four letters.

But again Pape is singular, so what if I use the plural?

Quickly I enter PAPES into the game.

I hold my breath and look away from the computer. I can't bear to be wrong. After a moment I return my gaze to my screen.

WRONG again.

The game shows that I am out of guesses, my final entry remains the same as before, PXPES. I have failed to get any closer.

Now the game types out the correct answer for me at the top of the screen. The correct answer is

POPES.

Oh no, how stupid can I be? I had PAPAL, I had PAPES, I had PIPES, how did I not think of POPES? POPES is so obvious!

I look around the coffee shop, fearfully, desperately. Did anyone just see me lose? Can anyone see my screen? No, no, no. Everyone in the coffee shop is doing his/her own thing. No one has seen me. I hurry and close my laptop. No one has to know about this. This never happened. My instinct to avoid word games was correct, the sorceress was wrong! Never again must I play this game. If I do, I risk exposure as a fraud and dork.