A pandemic of fun

Squardle

The world was in a state of flux.  It was supposed to be the end of history, but a 'novel' virus had forced a restructuring of the day if not of society, and it felt for a moment as if anything was possible.  Anything was possible.  There was talk of abolishing the police for a minute.  Juneteenth became a federal holiday. 

But what happened next was Joe Biden.  Sure there was an insurrection.  Russia invaded Ukraine.  Many of us are now earning our daily bread without leaving the house.  Who would have thought even 1 month before?  But I think the most revolutionary thing that came out of that period of flux was Wordle.  You heard me.  A simple online game developed by a Welsh software engineer named Wardle.  Almost echoing the trajectory of the novel coronavirus of 2019, it debuted in October 2021 but almost without warning by February of 2022 it had conquered the planet, once again altering people's days.  The rules were reminiscent of the old board game for two, Word Mastermind, although it was now human versus a computer generated puzzle.  The object is simple.  The player uses 5 letter words to guess a 5 letter word of the day and has 6 tries to guess.  With each guess the player learns through color coded clues how close their guess has come to the mystery word-- yellow indicating a correct letter in the wrong position, green indicating a correct letter in the correct position and grey meaning the letter is not in the mystery word.  The mystery words tend to be common words known to all, but to add to the level of difficulty, letters can repeat (as in EVERY, KAYAK, POPPY).  To a novice, the challenge can be daunting, but both the list of valid guess words and of mystery words is finite (guess words have a larger list and can include plurals and past tense-- mystery words tend not to be plural or past tense), and experience quickly teaches you that the puzzle can be solved usually without a lot of difficulty.  In spite of its simplicity or because of it, the game spread like a disease.

It instantly spawned a genre of YouTubers who turned a solitary pastime into a spectator sport.  The game itself inspired a proliferation of imitators to devise variations on the theme. Every time you turned around a new game popped up-- among them, Dordle in which the object was to solve 2 words simultaneously with the same clue; Xordle for solving 2 words with no overlapping letters within a single grid; Quordle for a 4-grid, 4-word solve; Octordle for an 8 word solve; and the more inscrutably named Sedecordle and Duotrigordle for 16 and 32 word puzzles respectively.  There were likewise variations in the length of the mystery word including an up-to-11-letter puzzle and variations in the rules and in  the degree to which the results of each guess helped or hindered  the solve. The most elaborate variation was perhaps Squardle with 6 words in multiple directions to solve within 10 guesses (plus a bonus guess for each solve) and an elaborate system for communicating in each direction the closeness of each guess to any of the mystery words. Speaking for  myself, the new class of puzzle came to dominate my leisure time.  Aside from Wordle, all the variations continue to be free; the only compensation an occasional appeal from the games' developers for a voluntary donation -- a "cup of coffee"-- for those enjoying the site.

After a year of obsession with doing every offshoot, I have finally settled into a more manageable routine involving only the most wordle-like variants, which I call the wordle multiples.  Somehow the smaller the solution set, the more nerve-wracking the experience.  Wordle isn't such a problem anymore, but I sweat it out through Dordle, Quordle and Octordle.  By the time I get to the 16-word Sedecordle I've hit a sort of stride with the solve, and am usually able to achieve a Zen-like state with the 32 word Duotrigordle.  At least that was the case until a recent update to the latter.  

Wordle being the offering of the staid NY Times, its solution words tend toward the palatable for mass consumption.  The same holds true for all but the 32-word variant.  For some reason (I was guessing a function of either the exponentially larger demand for 5-letter solution words or the presumed youth of its creator?), Duotrigordle's list of words included a larger share of words defying "The Breakfast Test"-- body parts and bodily functions, and an especially large list of double entendres that in some contexts could be considered ethnic, ableist or homophobic slurs.  I have never said I'm not a prude*, but when it comes to censorship, I like to think I am capable of setting aside my own delicate sensibilities for the sake of free thought.  For this reason, I put up with the expanded list (expanded list or not, words will repeat eventually for a 32-word puzzle), but I had to admit, the slurs ate at me.  A thought experiment clarified for me why this was a different category of offense than the carnal and the scatological.  

The thread that bound the slurs as a category was their punching down quality.  I had not encountered any words that could be taken as a slur against the white, male or wealthy.  I imagined the letter I would write to the developers of the game broaching the topic, and it occured to me that rather than asking for the slurs that I objected to to be removed,  I could suggest that the missing slurs be added.  I imagined this would be a clever demonstration to the game's developer that some words could be construed as hurtful and should be removed.  But in truth, even if the developer took my suggestion at face value and added slurs for the white, wealthy and male,  this would be an acceptable compromise that would not involve "censorship" or "wokeness".   I was not exactly prepared to stop playing the game on a regular basis regardless of the outcome (even if I was completely ignored), but this approach I decided was something I could live with.  

Before I could get it together to write the suggestion, however, I happened to notice a major revision of the game.  Among the features, the developer listed a revised "family friendly" vocabulary.   Several words that could be perceived as objectionable had been removed.  Meanwhile 350 new words had been added that would enhance the enjoyment of the game.   Had a fellow prude anticipated my strategem and made a persuasive case?  Whatever!  I could cross writing to the developer off of my list.

As I continued to play the game, however, I discovered that the developer has "enhanced" the word list by adding random proper nouns, arbitrarily acceptable plurals and past tenses and obscure computer jargon, thus increasing the difficulty of the game to nearly an unenjoyable level.   What's more, it was clear that while body parts and bodily functions had been removed, some of my least favorite punching down slurs continued to appear in the puzzles.  I'm not ready to give up the game just yet.  But I may have bought the developer his last cup of coffee for a while.

~~~~~

* I'm not a prude by choice mind you.  I'm also not the kind of prude who thinks people should kowtow to my delicate sensibilities.  On the contrary, I am convinced that prudery, something I may have been born with or that was foisted on me as the result of trauma of some kind, is my flaw that I need to protect undamaged people from.