Playing to win

Oh it's cold. So cold. It's Saturday morning and I am sitting in my car waiting for my son to finish his pre-season baseball workout. My car's temperature gauge reads 19 degrees. A radio announcer just helpfully noted that the wind chill makes it feel like ten degrees. So cold. 

After a week or so of chatter on the Twitter, I finally succumbed to the Wordle craze, as I knew I would. Yesterday's word took me all six tries. I got today's in four. If you have played the game, then you know that it's as much about deductive reasoning than words. I'm quite good at the latter but I'm not so good at the former. And that's the appeal, really. The difficult part is humbling. It keeps me in my place. And the easy part makes it fun. It's an awesome game. Too bad I only get to play once a day. I mean, I'm sure that there's an app that will allow you to play as often as you like, but the shared experience of that one game a day is also part of the fun. I'm two for two now. I'm going for a ten-game win streak. 

*****

It’s Sunday now and I’m three for three (and in only three tries this time). It’s a nicer day so I’ll actually go outside, because I need the exercise and because I need the sunlight to combat the seasonal affective disorder that’s making my low-level depression much much worse. 

My son had a swim meet yesterday, too. As anyone who hangs around here regularly knows, I often write during the dive meet because what do I know about diving? When you’ve seen one teenager do a backflip off a springboard into a pool, you’ve seen them all. But yesterday, instead of writing, I started making a list of five-letter words. I even installed an add-on to Google Docs so that I could alphabetize the list. It’s been three days and I already have an unhealthy and obsessive relationship with Wordle. I also have a running list of words (152 so far) and a three-game win streak. It might be too early to count my Wordle chickens, but I like my chances at ten for ten. I won’t tell you what today’s word is because maybe you want to play. Tomorrow could be anything: Arrow, Bread, Clock, Drive, Egret, Heron, Queen? There’s only one way to find out. A person has to play to win.