PERSONAL HISTORY - TABULA RASA

THE WORDLE PHILOSOPHY

- JOHN MCPHEE

In a cogent sense, I have spent, at this writing, about eighty-eight years preparing for Wordle. I work with words, I am paid by the word, I majored in English, and today I major in Wordle. On the remote chance that someone in the English-speaking world who is unfamiliar with Wordle ever happens upon this essay, I should explain that Wordle is a simple, straightforward online game. Each day, a five-letter word is hiding in the cloud, and you have six guesses to name it. On a grid f ive squares wide and six rows high, you enter your first guess. If your first guess is correct, it was something like a fifteen-thousand-to-one shot and feels like winning a lottery. Wordle responds to your first guess by filling in the back ground of each of your letters with one of three colors. The background turns charcoal gray if the letter is not part of the day’s secret word, yellow if the letter is in the word but not in that position, and green if the letter is right for the position it is in.