New zest for life and a daily word puzzle

MMMM, zesty! I like a bit of zest, specially when it adds freshness to winter stews and salads.

But I don’t like it so much in my daily dose of Wordle. I was nearly beaten this week when it featured in the now universally popular online puzzle which remains, for the moment, free and fun to play.

I say fun, but not when it came to zesty.

For the few folk who have not played Wordle, you are presented with a grid that allows you six attempts to find a five letter word.

There are no clues but, as you work down the grid making guesses, squares turn green for a correct letter in the right place, yellow for one that is part of the word but in the wrong place, or black for a letter that’s no use at all.

Part process of elimination; part having the vocabulary to guess the possible words you’re left with.

It can, on rare occasions and thanks to pure luck, be completed in just one or two goes. On other days a mix of good fortune and brains allows you a third or fourth place on the grid in under five minutes. Sometimes you struggle for ages.

Struggle, but hopefully get there in the end before you run out of your six attempts – which is almost what zesty caused me to do this week.

I have never been a puzzle addict, but months ago I latched onto Wordle and it has been part of my waking up routine ever since. I think it helps the ‘little grey cells’ to get going.

But like a lot of things one does with regularity, you start developing expectations and soon you’re keeping tally and setting a bar over which you must never fail to jump. Which can be a recipe for self-imposed torture.

I have never failed to complete Wordle in the half-dozen goes, but have come close on a few occasions. The puzzle realises how agonising this would be, because when an exhausted player eventually succeeds in getting the word on that final sixth line, a banner pops up saying: “Phew!”

Phew indeed!

Why do we do this sort of thing to ourselves? That’s what I’d like to know after spending 25 minutes racking my brains without the promise of a prize or any other material benefit.

I felt like a man who has clawed himself to safety after dangling over the edge of a cliff by his finger-nails.

A chunk of my life I shall never get back. I could have written a poem during that time. I could have penned a chapter of a novel.

I could probably have written this column! Or done something really useful like mowing the lawn or preparing tonight’s dinner. Or perhaps just walked the poor old dog.

But no. For reasons unknown, we love the leisure-time agony of puzzle-wrestling. I needed ‘zesty’, I needed it in six goes, and I was damned well going to get it!

An alien visitor to Earth might regard this as a form of madness.

Certainly – and not for the first time in my life – I am reminded that we humans are a very odd species.

Just look at some of the crazier things in the news.

There’s the editor who thought it fun to run a front-page lead about a female politician who, according to an unnamed source, crossed and uncrossed her legs in an alleged attempt to confuse our hapless prime minister.

You need to be pretty bright to be a newspaper editor, so I can only think the individual concerned was having an off-day.

Either that or they’re employed by Labour to work undercover for a right-wing newspaper and destroy its reputation from within.

The story offended millions at the same time as it impressed no one. Even Boris, for whom it was presumably designed as a form of support, derided it as trash.

Just before my time at school, children from previous generations who had done very stupid things were sent to a corner where they were made to sit under a big hat bearing the letter D. It stood for ‘dunce” – a term you don’t hear any more, but which I will watch out for in Wordle.

You can’t help but wonder if the hat wouldn’t suit that newspaper editor right now.

But if he or she isn’t wearing it, then it might well be donned by the politician who allegedly decided it was okay to openly watch porn on his smart phone inside the House of Commons.

What was he thinking? It was so wrong on so many levels. There cannot be a normal person from Truro to Timbuktu who’d think: “Why not? Seems a good idea to me.” Not one. Anywhere.

I can only imagine the politician had either momentarily lost his marbles, or he was drunk.

No, No, NO!

If it was the ‘old days’ you could envisage Margaret Thatcher crying out those words while beating his seedy little knuckles with a ruler and sending him to Dunce’s Corner.

But it’s not the old days, so goodness knows what’ll happen.

It’s all too zesty for me and, anyway, I must get some rest in readiness for tomorrow’s Wordle.

When an exhausted player eventually succeeds on that final sixth line, a banner pops up saying: “Phew!”