[imagesource: Keane Eacobellis]

Wordle was proving to be thoroughly enjoyable, guessing the one-a-day five-letter word in six tries or fewer, until an obscure word from last week popped up, something “only Bob The Builder would know”.

The word was “caulk” in case you missed it, a kind of waterproof sealant.

Be glad if you did miss it because those that didn’t, including myself, were full of four-letter expletives, calling out the noun all over social media.

But the fluctuating discontent for the word game, which Brooklyn-based Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle created as a token of love for his wife, didn’t just begin as he sold the game for a fair penny to The New York Times (NYT).

The Guardian outlined the growing concerns from players, starting off with the worry that the NYT may start adding advertisements or promotions to the game that is to “initially remain free”:

For British players there has also been the issue of cultural imperialism, otherwise known as American spelling. There was a collective loss of a sense of humour recently when “humor” was the solution, just as Brits had earlier felt disfavoured when “favor” appeared.

Then it emerged that the newspaper was removing words from the approved dictionary – you have to enter a recognised word on each line – that were deemed offensive, including “slave”, “lynch” and “wench”. The move was seen by some as a cryptically puritanical form of virtue signalling.

After the NYT committed to cull “obscure” words, there were also fears voiced that it would make the game easier, followed shortly afterwards by the anxious concern that it would be made more difficult.

Sure, you can’t please everyone, but with a word like “caulk”, you are displeasing everyone.

While a challenge is fine, it has to fall under what clinical psychologist Dr Patapia Tzotzoli calls the theory of self-determination:

“The theory suggests we can become self-determined when our three innate psychological needs – autonomy, competence and connection – are met,” she says.

“Wordle enables autonomy because we choose to take a few minutes out of our day to play it. It offers competence because we can solve a puzzle and fare better than others. And in terms of connection, it fosters a sense of belonging to a wider community. It hits all the right notes to activate our motivation to keep going back.”

The community of Wordle is based on an English-speaking one, which some reckon is being split by versions of the game made in other languages.

There are Wordle versions in 90 languages now, including Afrikaans, dubbed “Wortel“.

Personally, a multi-language community playing different versions sounds exciting.

Meanwhile, the “community” aspect is also further fracturing with other versions, some sexier than the usual, and others for the geography nerds out there.

Still cool.

But then, in the original Wordle, a problem with the URL also confused the “community” aspect as different words were being greenlit depending on how updated the URL was that you were playing with:

Instead of a single answer, there were two: aroma and agora, depending on whether or not you were using the old or new URL. The NYT decided to drop agora because it was too arcane (excuse me, caulk?) and replace it with aroma, but some unrefreshed browsers got the original choice instead.

Cue outrage of the kind more normally associated with gross infractions of the moral code, like flashing the Queen or swearing at David Attenborough. The judgment doing the rounds on Twitter was “scandal”. And many players felt that the one-word-a-day contract had been irrevocably broken.

To really confuse us all after all those challenges, they gave us a deceptively easy word, which many guessed as “shame”, “shape”, “shave”, “shade”, “shale” or “share”, eventually arriving at “shake” before the sixth turn if you were lucky.

Despite all the outrage, though, the word game phenomenon is still going strong.

For now…

[source:guardian]