Wordle Postgame Report, weekend CATCH up, December 16-18

The Wordle Postgame Report is a brief analysis of a game of Wordle, the five-letter-word guessing game now owned by the New York Times. If you do not play Wordle, Indignity encourages you to please skip this item. The existence of the Wordle Postgame Report does not constitute an endorsement of playing Wordle, not playing Wordle, or of the New York Times.

December 16, PROBE, 2/6

THE LONGER WORDLE goes on, the more previously unexamined rules about letters start coming into focus. I started with BLEAT and got yellow on the B and the E. Where did the B go? I guessed not in the very middle of the word; that's not a place a B generally wants to be. Without the A for company, it probably didn't want to be in the second spot, either. The likeliest spot for it and the E seemed to be at the end of the word; PROBE would be a good set of common letters to try it with. I meant it to be a test but it came up as the answer.

December 17, CHORD, 3/6

THE MEANING AND the distribution of not-quite-most-common letters made SNAKE feel like a good opener. It still felt that way even after coming up all gray. I ignored my persistent reflex, after any blank first round, to start a new word with P, and tried CHOIR. A chorus of green came up: one, two, three, then a gray, then a yellow. CHORE or CHORD, and SNAKE had already eliminated the E. The facts fit together in perfect harmony.

December 18, TAPER, 3/6

WAS IT COLD enough out for a SCARF? I was indoors, with a yellow A and R to work with. Switch from noun to adjective, and from one syllable to two: RAPID. Green A and a green P in the middle, so yes to two syllables; yellow R, so that would belong to syllable No. 2. What else would go there? How about the still unplayed E? TAPER. All the possibilities had narrowed down to the answer.

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