I have written about Wordle before.
It’s one of the main reasons I subscribe to the New York Times online and it is one of the first times I have gotten caught up in what appears to be one of the hot online fads.
Uh, Mike … You’re showing your age with the word “fad.”
Yes, I am 73 years old. It’s one of the reasons I play Wordle every day, battling to keep dementia at least a few years down the road. I’m pretty good at Wordle, too.
I have also started playing Chrono, a game in which being old is a definite advantage.
Because you know when the pyramids were built because you were there?
Actually, Wordle is one of a great variety of games, where players guess somewhere between one and 15 words. I play two variations, the one-word one each morning and Quordle on my iPhone.
Quordle (four words in nine guesses) is more difficult. Today was my 297th day playing it, and I succeed 92 percent of the time with a best-ever streak of 50 days.
Today was my 331st day on Wordle, which I get right 98 percent of the time and my best streak is 94 days. Wordle is six guesses to get one word, and my proudest accomplishment is not just only eight wrong, but only 11 days it took all six guesses to get it right.
I have friends who have succeeded in getting it right on the first guess, but that’s because they guess the same first word every day and every once in a long while, it’s the right guess. I doubt I’ll ever get it in one guess, but I’m very proud to have gotten it in two guesses 16 times.
In fact, I did that yesterday.
It was a lot tougher than it looks. Getting the first letter and also eliminating two vowels helps a lot, but trying to figure where to use the C was tough. It couldn’t be the fourth letter, and I don’t think there’s a word in the English language that starts with T-C, so the second was out too.
I spent a lot of time trying the C as the third letter, and the irony of it — and probably the main reason I got it in two — was when using the X popped into my mind. With that, T-O-X-I-C came right away. The reason it was ironic was that I have a friend who got all except the middle letter and then needed three guesses.
T-O-P-I-C, T-O-N-I-C and then T-O-X-I-C.
I guarantee that if I had been missing the middle letter, X would not have been my first guess.
The other game isn’t quite as interesting. Chrono gives you a list of six events from 4000 BCE up to 2023 and asks you to put them in order. Some are very easy and some are ridiculously difficult. You get three guesses. I succeed nearly 93 percent of the time, and 30 of my 103 successful guesses have been the first guess.
Yesterday was more difficult.
You wouldn’t think it would be that tough, but look at the fourth one. I certainly expected the first fax machine to have been invented in the 20th century, so I had the fourth and fifth ones reversed.
The others were easy.
Sometimes the events are better known, but there have been somewhere three of the six were within six or eight years of each other. Nevertheless, I enjoy it. My only complaint is that it usually takes less than one minute to do.
At any rate, my rapidly aging brain does manage to get a workout at least a couple of times every day.
At this rate, I ought to make it to at least 80 before the warranty expires.