10. Wordle, dev. Josh Wardle
Turns out I'm not completely immune to massive popularity. I am much anti-fad just by instinct. If I see a lot of people tweeting colored squares, I'm probably going to stay away. I tried as hard as I could to not even learn what Wordle was. Wordle finally beat me back in February and I'm still here.
Wordle is the single game I played the most in 2022. At the time of writing, my stats say I played it 352 times with a winning percentage of 96%, my current streak is 34, and best streak was 75. I'm actually better at a six-letter variation called WordHurdle, with a 97% winning rate, and 106 win streak. I also routinely play Quordle and Octordle and sometimes Sedecordle if I want to go full freak. And let us not forget that I have to play Framed, the movie screenshot version. I was into Heardle for a bit but I fell off that because I wasn't very good at it. Sorry, I cannot recognize "Zombie" by the Cranberries in five seconds, the opening bars to every song from the Nineties sounds like "Wonderwall" to me. Finally Worldle, the geography version, was way too easy. Oh and there's Linkr, the daily linking game, that one rules.
Maybe we have gone too far. My morning routine now is waking up and playing like four games on my phone before I even get out of bed. Is that healthy? Is that unhealthy? I dunno. It has developed in me a deep hatred for the letter 'J', one of the least-used letters in English, so uncommon that I used every letter in the alphabet in that last paragraph except one: 'J'. All my homies hate 'J'. The word 'NINJA' can lick my ass.
Of course, Wordle started it all. It was a big fad in early 2022. Technically Wordle launched in October 2021, but I do not remember seeing anything about it until Christmas and by last January, it was the most talked-about game in the world. Until a circle of advanced age came along and conquered the world. January was the same month that Josh Wardle wisely sold out just as the fad peaked and got himself a tidy undisclosed seven-figure sum from the New York Times. I have heard endless complaints that the NYT ruined the game, usually all shallow ones. Lizzie O'Leary from Slate was upset that the NYT would dare have some whimsy and pick 'FEAST' for the solution on Thanksgiving. I think she was tongue in cheek, but still, come on !
The only issue I've ever had with the Times owning Wordle is that they treat their workers like shit. I had to break my Wordle streak on December 8th because of a one-day walkout by their Union. And also, my opening word is always 'RATIO' and I notice that has never been the solution. Is the NYT tacitly admitting to some kind of deep fear here? Maybe stop carrying water for horrible anti-trans movements and you do not need to fear a Twitter reaction, Gray Lady. And you'll out-live Twitter anyway, so do not worry.
Anyway, as a game, Wordle is just a clever little construction. It's a deviation on hangman that with seemingly easy options, but thousands of possibilities. As you run out of guesses, the stakes get real. You never would believe how much drama can occur when you have the last four letters of '-IGHT' and the first letter could be twelve different things: 'S', 'B', 'L', 'N', 'E', 'F', 'M', 'R', 'W', or the dreaded duplicate, 'T'. Or very rare words 'DIGHT' or 'HIGHT'. I only got three guesses left, you're killing me, Wordle! Or you have a jumble of yellows, one guess, that somehow add up to being 'ABODE', but you spend ten minutes trying to work out something ending with 'O'. "'BEADO'? Is it 'BEADO'?" There is something magical when your brain snaps out of its blockage and solves it. And there is something terribly painful when you realize you'd have never solved it, like when the word is 'NINJA'. Fuck 'NINJA'. Duplicate 'N' and a 'J', what a miserable, horrible word.
Video games do not need to be all that sophisticated, or even have much "video" to them. I love really basic puzzles to kill time with Solitaire and Minesweeper, so hey, welcome to club, Wordle. I can never finish the Times crossword, but I can beat you.
There's also GuessTheGame, which is basically a variant where you have to guess a video game through screenshots, and as you guess incorrectly, it gives you more info such as original release platforms, developers, and original release year.
ReplyDelete