Robert Galvin: Turn here if you're at a loss for words

Robert Galvin, Mail Tribune, Medford, Ore.
·4 min read

Jan. 29—CRIMP

KNOLL

SUGAR

WHACK

MOUNT

PERKY

COULD

Life is too complicated these days.

For instance, I'm writing this column without the benefit of my glasses — which, for some reason, I left at home before alighting at my usual perch at a local caffeinating hole.

I could drive home, retrieve the specs and return ... but by then I would have lost my preferred table, and my iced tea will have gotten warm.

See? ... Complicated.

Therefore, not only am I unsure of what I'm typing ... being at this moment a Henry Bemis trying to make sense of my blurry, chicken-scratched notes and hunting and pecking my way across the keys ... but my train of thought has completely been derailed.

Lucky you.

Here was a simple task — prattling on for about 800 or words beginning with those seven in italics — that I've managed to FUBAR because of a SNAFU due to failing memory and eyesight.

Now ... where was I?

Back at the beginning I suppose, since this is how I was planning to open this week:

"The seven words above have two things in common:

a) They are each five-letters long; and

2) They were the answers to the previous week's Wordle puzzles."

For those who have yet to be assimilated, "Wordle" (rhymes with "Turtle") is an online brain game that tests your vocabulary ... and your ability to adhere to a moral code.

No, I do not know why it takes six letters to spell the name of a game centered on five-letter words.

Anyway, you are presented with a keyboard, above which is a six-row grid of five blank squares.

Type in a guess ... for instance, G-U-E-S-S ... hit the ENTER key and you find out how many letters in that day's Wordle you've got correct (the boxes appear in gold) ... and which landed in their proper spot (green).

The fewer attempts it takes you to get the answer, the better your score, and the higher form of affirmation you receive from the game itself.

For you golfers out there, think of the six guesses this way: Hole-in-one, Eagle, Birdie, Par, Bogey, Other ... although at the rate my golf game is going, there really should be 10 shots allowed.

If you completely miss out on that day's word (I couldn't get KNOLL this week), Wordle tells you the answer and mocks you for wasting 10+ minutes of your life.

Well, it doesn't ... but it should.

Yes, I said "that day's word." You only get one — like a chance to make a good first impression or Flinstones vitamins.

There are variations out there which, if you'd like, allow you to play all day — but, seriously, how many times to you want to be embarrassed?

There is no clock counting down (or up, for that matter). There is no stick figure whose life hangs in the balance as you incrementally construct the gallows.

Five letters, six guesses. In this complicated worlde ... err, world ... where solutions to enormous problems seem outside our grasp, here is a daily opportunity to regain some control over our surroundings.

Which brings us to the ethical dilemma.

This being an online game, the internet has cracked the Wordle code. There are cheat-sheets out there that provide tips on how to play, which letters work best in which spots, and which guesses to use as your tee shot to take a shortcut to the green boxes.

And, of course, since you're under no obligation to play Wordle with others watching, you can lie about your score ... for those wondering why I used the golf analogy.

But what fun is that? The internet already has eroded our ability to access our dormant supply of critical thinking, here's a chance to stretch out those atrophied muscles and feel good about it at the same time.

It's a game ... not a job.

Back in the days of yore, I was given a spelling test as part of an interview for an editing job (might have been this one, actually ... but it was a common practice in olden times).

The idea was to see whether I knew how to spell such toughies as "gubmint," "nukuler" and "strategery" ... in the unlikely event, I suppose, I would find myself writing a story about gubmint nukuler strategery.

Any questions, the interviewer asked. Yes, I replied ... just one:

"May I use a dictionary?"

Now, of course, our machines won't let you spell a word incorrectly ... except, of course, for "incorrectly." (I battled four or five times, for instance, just to slip "nukuler" past the joyless auto-correct censors.)

Words escape me more often these days ... age and astonishment have taken a toll. Sometimes they reach the tip of my tongue and, as I open my mouth to form them, they take a peek and decide, "Uhn-uhn, there's no way I'm going out there."

That's another reason why I don't mind wasting 10-15 minutes of my life each day playing "Wordle."

I think I'll tee off this morning with R-E-L-A-X.

Wordle can be accessed at powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle. Mail Tribune columnist Robert Galvin can be accessed at rgalvin@rosebudmedia.com