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STUCK MIDDLE: What’ll Wordle do for you?

Bill Humleker

By Bill Humleker, Published: May 22, 2022

Around these parts, I have become known as a word wonk. So yes, of course I play Wordle.

Of late, the most frequent question I am asked in line at the market is whether I indulge in the now ubiquitous, on-line five-letter word game. My sister-in-law got me addicted in January, and I am now participating in several strings. These “strings” are made up of solvers who share their daily results with each other, and my strings are certainly diverse.

One string is among several school friends of long, long ago whom Facebook, and now Wordle have reconnected. Several among us had the same Latin Master, an unforgettable character who had an indelible effect on generations of schoolboys. He is most certainly part of the source of my fascination with words.

Another of my strings is among some childhood neighbors with whom I stay in touch. One still lives back in our hometown, another in Manhattan (Maine in summertime), and here I roost in these ancient Southern mountains. We also exchange newspaper crossword puzzles via email, so we are inveterate wordies.

My original string is among my sister-in-law who knew I would like Wordle, her 17-year-old daughter, and the younger of my not-17-year-old daughters. This latter usually starts the daily ball rolling as her 9-month-old son bids her rise quite early, and like her daddy, Princess II finds that words help to lubricate her early-morning brain waves. My mother, and perhaps my mother-in-law would be enthusiastic members of this string.  

In re: Wordle itself: I am frequently asked if I use the same word each morning to begin, which I believe many people do. I do not. Like my daughter, I usually try to solve the puzzle among the first things I do in the morning and find that searching for a good first guess helps to wake my brain. I know several people who like the word ADIEU for starters because it has so many vowels.   It’s a good thought that does not work for me. Rather, I use the old RSTLNE standard; those are the most frequently used letters in English and coming up with a good word using at least three of those letters is my custom. One friend likes IRATE because it combines three vowels with a couple of those common consonants. I like that, but I think it’s more fun to just guess a little more randomly. Science and instinct are good partners in success. Usually.  

Wordle highlights in color which of the letters you have chosen are simply correct (yellow), which are correct and in the right order (green), and of course, which letters are flat-out wrong (black). And Wordle likes to throw occasional curves: it allows foreign words which have snuck into English usage, and sometimes it allows letters to be used more than once. MEZZO (as in soprano), for example, is not only foreign, but features a double, rather uncommon consonant. Wordle allows six guesses per game, and my statistics are decent; I have not managed to solve just four out of almost eighty attempted puzzles. My “par” is four tries, and that seems quite average among my strings. I solved MEZZO in only three tries, and I have no idea how. Dumb luck certainly plays its part.

Overall, I think, we Late Middle folks do quite well. After all, we have heard, used, and abused many words, and we like to think that we still remember most of them. MAYBE might be my first guess tomorrow.

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Stuck in the Late Middle columnist Bill Humleker writes about family, community and culture in what he likes to call "HendoRock."