The discreet charm of Wordle
Wojciech R. Bolanowski, MD PhD
Chief AI Officer, retail and digital banking, payments and fintech in EU, GCC, SEA, enthusiast of cross-border banking
I have been playing wordle every morning for about two months already. It does not take long to try up to six times and guess a five character long English word which is a task for the day and then enjoy the precious moment of success. Few times, I must admit, I did not guess correctly, and it left me with the disturbing feeling of emptiness and frustration, and … inpatient waiting for new wordle.
The fresh wordle is ready to guess (March 12, 2022)
Limitation which attracts
Seriously, the fact that there is one wordle per day only, although annoying, makes the game so appealing. In this case less is more and solving one problem with no chance to take up another immediately afterwards adds a value to the gameplay. The scarcity of challenges makes them more attractive. It makes me think with which word I will start playing on next day, how difficult the next word would be and so on. I am engaged with wordle without playing it. It is something which only the best games can create. The time counter appears after completing each wordle and shows how much time remains to another challenge. It always seems too long to see a new word to guess.
How long until the new puzzle? Too long! (March 1, 2022)
Simple but huge community
On internet everybody can share their passion about wordle and the way to do so is super simple.  The community of wordle fans is huge and gathered around one subject – the game. The exact figure is not officially disclosed, but the data from January 2022 suggests over one million players per day. The access to the group was worth paying seven figures sum by New York Times which bought the game from its creator. Sometimes, when the word to guess is exceptionally difficult, my Twitter bubble literally explodes with the comments. Some of us are frustrated, some incredible satisfied, but all are very in it, extremely passionate and engaged. What is a winning ingredient? The super simply way to share your wordle result – the simple graph shows your achievement and does not disclose the word. It is also absolutely cross-platform sharing – whole piece is just copied to the clipboard and could be pasted anywhere you want!
Sharing my wordle on Twitter (March 7, 2022)
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A charm of ‘a word for a day’
Each day, there is only six attempts for a single puzzle. No matter how hard anyone tries, it does not take long to finish the game. This is a point. No matter how easy or hard to guess today word is, there is not another chance but tomorrow. In the times of instant reward, it is something uncommon. Social platforms, interested deeply with user stickiness, serve us timelines, feeds, full of content and invite to interaction. It is enough to like or share something and our mind indulges with the pleasure of activity. No matter if this activity makes any sense or value, we keep ourselves busy, burning hours at the front of the screens and giving away our attention, time, and engagement to advertisers. Wordle does not keep players at the screen for long. It gives you a pleasure of leisure with no guilt of time wasting. Pretty charming combination.
Another wordle solved. Now I must wait for thirteen hours and a bit (March 12, 2022)
Self-awareness and self-control
The game can also teach self-awareness and control. It is only up to a player which aid they uses. Is it only their linguistic skills, not supported by any dictionary or web searching? Is it a bit of googling to check the words fitting to the pattern? Is it, at last, plain search for the solution which was already disclosed by somebody on the web? It is a completely independent decision of a player how to play wordle. When the result is shared on the web nobody will ask how it was achieved. On many occasions internauts shows wordle guessed in the first trial – a pure luck – and nobody challenges whether they just input the word they knew previously. It makes players aware what actually they do expect from the game. They set the difficulty level by themselves and then they follow their rules (or not). It is a kind of very conscious choice between the urge to know the answer and the joy of trying to guess it. Interestingly, the code of the game is available from the browser and its analysis allows to guess the words in advance. In fact, the wordle is not a word to guess if anybody wants to know it beforehand. Hence, playing it without knowing the solution is the proof of our self-control and understanding what puzzles are about. Their charm is in the process of solving, not in the knowing the solution.
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