Human beings are social creatures and as we all know we bond over our love for food, for sports, for books and recently, over the love for WORDLE! It is amazing how a simple but clever game of guessing a random five-letter word in six tries has sparked off interest globally.
Our ‘Calif family’ WhatsApp group chat lit up some months back with friendly sibling rivalry over WORDLE. We discussed starter words, and shared stats frequently. Far away nephews and nieces – across the country and across oceans – found something common that we could connect on despite the generation gap.
WORDLE started off as an app made by an enterprising New York software engineer in mid-2021 for his girlfriend, and the game was purchased by The New York Times Company in January 2022. Like for many folks, this word game has become a daily morning routine for me as well. Nothing beats the combination of the glow of a California daybreak with coffee and WORDLE!
And yes, a global phenomenon it indeed is. On a recent trip to Singapore, our very warm and hospitable hosts treated us to a nice dinner. The décor in the boutique restaurant was from the British colonial era with stacks of books lining the shelves in the dining lounge area. As the conversation floated between food and pets and travel and more, it moved on to WORDLE. Everyone had played it earlier in the year but then as with anything new the novelty had gradually tapered off. To my delight, the youngest in the group was still an avid player! Even as we are in completely different stages of life with different priorities and outlooks, I was glad we had found something in common. I imagine our work meetings now will start off not only with engineering validation protocols pending to be approved, but our WORDLE score for the day 😊
The magic of words never ceases to amaze me, and this shared experience of a word game only enhances their evergreen charm!
~AK Irvinekar
So true! Words do indeed have power! I remember looking forward to solving the crossword puzzle in The Times of India! Wordle has indeed provided a common ground for many! Nice thought! Thank you for sharing!
Glad it resonated with you Padmini! I remember the TOI Sunday paper too 🙂