Failing to Win

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I started playing Wordle on a Thursday because my friend Ruth was able to explain it so I understood it. I began sharing my results the next day, on Friday 2/18/2022. My husband had previously tried to get me to join in with him and the kids and play daily but it didn’t make sense when he explained it, so I didn’t try.

Let me attempt to explain the game. You have six chances to guess the correct 5-letter word each day. You can only play once a day. If a letter is the right letter in the right spot, it turns green, if it is a right letter in the wrong spot it turns yellow. It just makes sense to use what you learn in each guess to help you choose your next guess. You can play at https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html

When I first learned to play, I didn’t worry about how many guesses it took me to get the word, I just didn’t want to fail. I was excited by the fact that I could get the word right in 6 guesses or less. My immediate family has a group text titled Wordle where we post our results each day. . On the group text we often comment on the cool patterns created by our unique guesses that day. I also share my daily results with Ruth. I try to remember to play daily.

I have discovered many of my friends and acquaintances also play Wordle. We have even had discussions about whether it is better to start with the same word every day or pick from a variety of words with 5 of the most common letters. One of my favorite words to start with is STORM, another is FRUIT,  but I also use LEARN sometimes. Sometimes as I think of which word to start with, a word pops into my brain and anything else I think of using just doesn’t seem as perfect as the one that popped into my head, so I go with it. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not so much, but I have learn to trust the words that push themselves into my brain. I have trouble guessing words with two of the same letter, or with an X or Z, these just seem so unlikely that sometimes it causes me to fail. A few times the word of the day made me say, “Really?!?, with 14,000 plus 5-letter words to pick from they chose THAT?”

Today a comment by my friend Ruth inspired me to write this post. Her inspiring post is shown here. “Wrong guess between two possibilities. RATS. Have to start a new streak.” My response to her was, “It’s not about streaking. It’s about challenging your brain to think every day. It thinks longer on the days you fail than it does on the days you get to the right word in 4 or fewer guesses. So as long as you were thinking and not trying to fail, every fail is actually just you exercising your brain longer, and when muscles get exercised longer, they get stronger. So you win.”

It has been almost a year since I began playing Wordle, and I want to share my stats  here. I will take that 98% win rate and ignore that it also means I have failed a few times.

Sounds almost like a life lesson, I thought. Maybe worth sharing. Could turn it into a blog post. That seems like a good idea. So here I am writing my first blog post in almost three years, and it’s all Ruth’s fault!

The longer we stay away from something, like posting to a blog regularly, the harder it is to come back. I was in the habit of posting once a week every Thursday without fail. I posted March 5, then March 12, 2020. Then on March 17th the company I work for sent almost every employee home to work and only a handful of us, considered essential, continued to show up in person. My creative impulse was stifled. I tried again, on March 26th, after missing just the one weekly post. Then I posted again after skipping three weeks and a day, on Friday April 18, 2020. I wanted to share the cheerful Shaun the Sheep statue photos I had taken in September 2015 on our last trip to London. I took so many photos because they were all so colorful and cheerful. That seemed like something everyone could use after living more that six weeks in a pandemic world. After that, I stopped doing anything creative and haven’t started up again.

All my writing groups and crochet groups had gone dark, not meeting for the foreseeable future. I saw almost nobody I knew or recognized except the handful of people at work. It has taken a long time to make sense of the new normal in life. I didn’t intend to stay away so long, but making a come back is hard. I got yarn from my daughter for Christmas and at first I felt bad that she had spent her money on something I would never use. Then I figured I should give crocheting a try again, and that perhaps the yarn cakes she gave me that were so colorful a pretty should be my inspiration. So on Christmas Day, I found myself searching for crochet patterns that would take just the one cake she had provided and I wouldn’t have a bunch left over. I wanted to use it all up, but not need to buy more to finish the project. That was tougher than I thought it would be. So I am back to crocheting having done almost none since March 2020. I am using the less colorful of the two cakes she got me (Baby Cake Pool Party) to make a baby afghan. No for anyone I know, just because. We shall see how well it turns out before deciding what to do with the slightly larger and much more brightly colored Big Cake Rainbow Jellys.

Since I have jumped back into one of my former creative activities, it only seems logical to give writing a go again too.

I can’t promise I will get back to posting weekly, but now that I have created one post, maybe the next one will be easier. I can tell you that I have made the commitment to keep this domain name for 5 more years and paid for hosting for the next 3 years. So it would seem silly not to use it. Stay tuned…

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