A new craze has hit Dana Hall and the world: the online word guessing game Wordle. Many students and faculty have been intrigued by this daily interactive game. According to a recent Hallmanac survey with 200 responses, 81% of responders had tried the daily game.
The goal of the game is to take six guesses at a five-letter word that is in the Wordle word list. After each guess, the tiles turn colors to give the player hints: When a tile turns green, it means the letter is in the correct spot and is in the daily word. A yellow tile indicates the letter is in the word but in the incorrect position. And when a tile stays gray, the letter is not in the word at all. One’s score is the number of guesses it took to get the correct word. Wordle posts a new hidden word each day, and people often post their scores to social media and compare their strategies to guess the day’s word.
Wordle is “engaging and is a great way to start the day,” said Kate Adams ‘23. She sometimes gets stuck because of how unique the words. Bella Bert ‘22 said that her first word every day is always “adieu” because it gives her a wide range of guesses. Also, she thinks that the difficulty of the word depends on the day and sometimes she “genuinely didn’t know the word existed.” Sophia Cook ‘22 agrees that the more vowels in the first guess, the closer you are to the word.
Alla Baranovsky, Upper School Math teacher and avid Wordler, explained that the game can be “frustrating and depends on luck.” Dr. Baranovsky thinks “the algorithms and strategies on the internet are useless.” She explained that the world around her influences what words she will guess each day. For example, she saw a mouse on the road, and that influenced her to make her first guess the word “mouse” because it has several vowels in it, which is would give her helpful hints for further guesses.
David Ng, Computer Science teacher, said that many people are fascinated that the creator of Wordle put “all of his code so open and freely available to people.” Mr. Ng developed his own program, Wordle Help, which helps automate potential words more efficiently. His program works by having Wordle and Wordle Help open in the browser. Then, entering the tile colors from Wordle into Wordle Help makes a list of possible words to use as guesses. In Wordle Help, clicking a tile once turns it yellow, and clicking it twice turns it green.
Ever since Wordle hit the web, several websites have developed concepts like Wordle. Matt Enlow, Upper School Math Teacher, promoted one of the variants, Absurdle, through his weekly Math Club Meetings. Though it has the same concept, “the secret word changes every guess” and has unlimited guesses. Hello Wordl is another popular game that mirrors the goal of Wordle, except the number of letters can be changed by the player. For example, you can guess a four-letter word or an eight-letter word.
After Wordle became wildly popular in 2021, The New York Times acquired Wordle in January. Some users debate whether that acquisition has changed the game, as reported in the New York Post. Some Dana Hall community members, such as Kate, argue that Wordle words have become more challenging since The New York Times purchase. Charlotte Weber ‘23 echoes Adams on the difficulty of the words and thinks “that the popularity of the game has increased the challenge.”
