A friend of mine recently stated that they did not particularly care for Wordle (a favorite game of mine). I quipped that there were no hard feelings; it wasn’t like I received a commission on every user I converted. However, it did get me contemplating why we enjoy particular games. I believe it has a great deal to do with how the games were introduced to us and the community in which we enjoyed them.
Wordle
I first came across Wordle when I was working at New/Mode. A colleague posted his results in the #team-random Slack channel. I couldn’t make head or tail out of the array of green and yellow squares. Someone else on the team inquired, “Wordle?” and the poster replied, “Yep.” Other folks began sharing their scores on a daily basis. My curiosity was eventually sufficiently piqued to check out what Wordle was. I started playing it and sharing my scores as well. My HR manager stated that our team really seemed to have bonded over Wordle. Some of us moved on to Quordle and Octordle.
It’s been over a year since New/Mode and I had to part but I still play Wordle with my mom and enjoy it.
Jumble
When I was young (grade school), I would play Jumble on a daily basis. It would be published in the Toronto Star and I would eagerly await it. This was another game that my mom and I would play together. It was fun to figure out what the scrambled words were. The answers were usually easy but there were some challenges. We would write out the letters and try to figure out what the words could possibly be. Sometimes, we would figure out the words but the answer to the riddle would be a puzzler. We would once again write out the letters and mull them over. Eventually, the answer would dawn on us or we would read it the next day. Either way, Jumble was a blast.
I no longer get the paper delivered but I have a Jumble tear-off calendar. It doesn’t feel quite the same because you can get the answer on the same day (by looking at the back of the page). I guess waiting for the answer to arrive was a big part of the fun. My mom has too many other responsibilities to participate and it is not my spouse’s cup of tea. It is still enjoyable to collect the pages and solve the puzzles when we are waiting in the doctor’s office.
Blossom
Blossom (by Merriam-Webster) is a game that I discovered and played on my own. I liked to share the scores with my mom. It would be a real thrill when I could break 400 or, on one memorable occasion, 500. A score in the 300s is standard. I found that I could increase my score by writing down the words before entering them online. I would select the longest words that would generate the highest scores.
My love for Blossom apparently has its roots in my childhood when my parents would play a nighttime game where they shared a word such as ‘RADIOSTATION’ and would challenge me to find as many words as I could using the letters in the word ‘RADIOSTATION’. We would write them down on my dad’s office letterhead (also a thrill for a little girl). The longer the list grew, the happier we were. It was so much fun!
I discovered a kindred spirit many years later when I read “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown. Sophie’s beloved grandfather keeps her six-year-old self busy by giving her the word ‘PLANETS’ and asking her to write down all ninety-two words that can be formed from the seven letters. This is not the part of the book that many people remember; however, it struck me enough to attempt the exercise on my lunch hour. I was delighted when I came up with all ninety-two words.
Games kept our minds active and our relationships strong (by sharing scores) during the pandemic. Now that things are back to normal (relatively speaking), we’ve become more selective. The New York Times seems to have a monopoly on the best games, having purchased Wordle and recently introduced the world to Connections and Strands. These games keep me in touch with my long-distance friends, many of whom are undergoing challenging cases of life. I find that these games lift our spirits, give us something new to anticipate every morning and like a certain coffee brand from my childhood, offer us “a getaway … from the everyday. Très bien, as they say?”
Saranya Murthy 