Do you enjoy wrestling with a Wordle?
Tens of millions of people now play the New York Times game, which involves figuring out the five-letter word in six tries.
Senior editor of the New York Times games section Deb Amlen shares the "really good" starting word she always uses.
Photo: Nils Huenerfuerst / Unsplash
Deb tells Anna Thomas that she always launches her Wordle game with a word that includes three vowels and two very common consonants – 'RAISE'.
"My strategy, and I think this is a strategy for a lot of people … is to find that sweet spot between having enough vowels that will help you guess the word but also trying to guess words that have very common consonants."
For an article about Wordle last year, Deb researched favourite starting words and found only 28 percent of people have one they use consistently.
The most popular of these is 'ADIEU' – the French word for goodbye. (Although this is a good choice in being full of vowels, Deb points out that it doesn't get you very far with consonants.)
As with all good puzzles, Wordle is "simple to understand but challenging to do", she says.
"It's fun, especially if you're a word nerd like me and the best thing of all, it's very quick."
Thanks to Wordle, its famous crosswords and other popular games such as Spelling Bee, Vertex and Tiles, New York Time Games is now "a really, really nice place to be", Deb says.
"Between politics and world news and Covid, there's been a lot of instability in the world. And the one thing puzzles do for people is they challenge you to make order out of chaos.
"If you're busy making order out of chaos it gives you this feeling of control that you might not have looking out at the world.
'When you do a puzzle, it's very satisfying and when you've solved it you put everything in order. I think it definitely gives you a feeling of satisfaction and control over your life."
If a daily Wordle isn't enough for you, Deb recommends Duotrigordle – a Wordle-style game in which you guess 32 words at once.
"Wordle is like a lollypop and Duotrigordle is more like an all-day sucker.'
Wordle - which was created by software engineer Josh Wardle and acquired by the New York Times a year ago - will remain free for the immediate future, Deb says.
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