One very regular cruciverbalist I know, with decades of cryptic experience, believes he is hampered by the size of his vocabulary, which is an interesting theory. His mornings now begin with a cup of coffee and Wordle, where he fiercely competes with his daughter and granddaughter.
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He calls his daughter “the Hare” because she seems to work entirely on inspired guessing, whereas he is “the Tortoise” because he is more strategic. The granddaughter he calls “the Leveret” (a young hare – told you he had a big vocabulary) because she is also an inspired guesser like her mother.
But Wordle upends even the moral in Aesop’s The Tortoise and the Hare – that you can be more successful by doing things slowly and steadily than by acting quickly and carelessly. Because at its heart, it is a guessing game. Like any game of chance – and even life itself – success is as much luck as skill.
Don’t get me wrong. As someone who works with words, this interest in them is wonderful and welcome, even the inevitable knock-offs and cheap imitations, including the parody Byrdle, (which from its outset apologises to Wordle), Dordle, (which doubles your chances by giving two words to tackle at once), to Sweardle, (clearly created for Americans when it congratulates you for “your potty mouth”) to the “Fifty Shades” of Wordle version, Lewdle (use your imagination here).
To my mind, they have more in common with computer coding and playing the pokies than anything else.
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Addiction experts agree it is the anticipatory stimulus that has us waking up each morning racing to the Wordle grid, in much the way addicted pokie players continue their gambling sessions, what Associate Professor Charles Livingstone, head of the gambling and social determinants unit at the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, calls the dopamine reward system.
Like the swirl of fruit on a poker machine, the turning Wordle tiles induce a physiological response, in much the way Pavlov’s dog would salivate at the sound of the bell. We show up, conjure up a word with some help from the wizard of odds, and give it a gamble.
It fires up those neural pathways of reward/gratification that make you feel good when you finish.
Only my experience is the opposite. Our group often gets grumpy, frustrated at how slow our minds work, jealous of our competition and suspicious.
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My initial prediction was this would be just a January thing for me. That I would lose interest faster than I could solve a Rubik’s Cube. So far I’m hooked, still into February. But will I continue to play if I have to pay?
Unlikely. But whatever I do, perhaps it is best I just go it alone.
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War of the Wordlers brings out the worst in us all
Source: Philippines Alive
