Whether it is late at night when sleep refuses to engulf me and I am staring at the game, or when I am just up and about after a fitful night’s sleep ready to tackle the day. After a break, I automatically pick the phone and reach to the Wordle shortcut on my phone wondering what word is in store for me today.
The yellow, green and gray boxes stare at me, hinting permutations and combinations that may work for me.
If you have come this far and wondering what I am talking about, for the uninitiated, Wordle is a word game where you get 6 tries to guess a five-letter word. And it could be ANY word from the dictionary.
And here’s a look back at the Wordle story. Josh Wardle created this game for his partner Palak Shah who loves any game that deals with vocabulary. From 90 players in November 2022 to 3 million players playing Wordle daily, the game soared in the recent times with everyone taking that once chance in 24 hours to guess that word.
Here is how the game goes. For each try, letters in the right places turn green, letters that are in the word but not in the right place turn yellow, and letters that aren't in the word turn gray. What if life came with such hints? Or your job did?
Green if you were on the right track, yellow if you are nearly there, but not there and grey if we are completely off-track.
I jumped onto the bandwagon of Wordle almost two months ago, a tad infrequent, but it was about a month ago that it became a part of my life. In all of this mayhem, I lost my winning streak twice and was completely gutted.
I sulked, moped and was a tad annoyed at people who solved it and also caught up on tweets from people who were as disappointed as I was.
And the thought that crossed my mind was how could ONE game get 3 million people stare at the screen to guess that ONE word that could break or carry on the winning streak. And thus stemmed the idea for this article, life lessons I learned from Wordle.
Patience is a virtue.
Certainly not a virtue that tops my list. But because you get just that one chance in a day like the 3 million others to play the game, you learn to wait. And with the wait came patience.
Trust your instincts.
You know that feeling when you know you are right, I realised it was best to go with it! Some words may have multiple combinations to get it right, but more often that not the easiest word was the correct one! There will be exceptions like that lone Scottish word that stumped me and had me google what it meant! But the good part I learned a new word!
Make new friends.
There is a world of Wordlers (is that a term I just coined?) out there who share their answers almost daily. Share your answers too and get out of the comfort zone and make like-minded friends from across the globe. The Wordle gang often tags each other to share the number of attempts they took to crack the word.
Limited chances, but unlimited choices.
Life is a curveball. It may show us unlimited choices, but the truth is that only when zero in to the intentional choices we have that we reach our goal.
Focus. Focus. Focus.
The number of minutes I took to get the word right ensured no distractions and pure focus. While the mind was riddled with endless
possibilities of what the word could be, at the end of the game, it was focus that gave me the chance to crack it. If the same focus could be applied to relationships, work and other aspects of life, things would be happier
Celebrate small wins
You are one of the 300,000 people (and counting) who guessed the word right. Let your wins, no matter how small they are be celebrated. It makes you feel good!
Feed your soul
One thing that resonates with me at all times is to do things that spark joy in life. Many times, we are caught in the 9-5 rut, sometimes doing things that suck out the happiness from within. What keeps me sane on most days is taking out those few minutes to do things I truly love, even if it means reading up on something interesting or playing that game of Wordle. If truth be told, Wordle is an honest hobby that sparks that joy in my life.
While the rest of the world is side tracked with other things, take time off for this simple word game. It has everything that you deal with in life; eliminations, possibilities, probabilities and more.
At the end of the day, no matter what word Wordle throws at you, the one word that will be your constant is HAPPY!
If you haven't yet given Wordle a try, please do.
(Pratibha Pal spent her childhood in idyllic places only fauji kids would have heard of. She grew up reading a variety of books that let her imagination wander and still hopes to come across the Magic Faraway Tree.You can view her blog at www.pratsmusings.com or reach to her on Twitter at @myepica.)
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