Wonderful world of word games

Playing such games is human nature, and having this one made it easier — and more fun — to be in the middle of a pandemic

What’s your Wordle score? It seems this question has rocked the world for the past few months. And it’s fantastic. Word games are part of human life and have evolved into brilliant games like Scrabble, crosswords and others.

I grew up with a crossword-loving mother, and my parents played the Target word game every day with each other. We played Scrabble at every opportunity — it was my mother’s favourite.

On every trip “I spy with my little eye” was played, and today this habit is being continued in our car with our four-year-old.

Wordle, needless to say, has become a runaway phenomenon.

It was created by software engineer Josh Wardle in October 2021, essentially as a gift for his wife — hence the clever use of his surname.

The couple used to play The New York Times Spelling Bee word game, and now Wardle’s personal gift has become a joy to millions of people who play it every day.

“I’d be lying if I said this hasn’t been a little overwhelming. After all, I am just one person, and it is important to me that, as Wordle grows, it continues to provide a great experience to everyone,” Wardle said when he sold the game to the New York newspaper for an amount “in the low seven figures”.

Part of Wordle’s success was the way you could share your score using an image with coloured blocks when you posted it. This created competition without the word of the day being given away.

I grew up in a house filled with floor-toceiling bookshelves, where everybody read except my late brother Mike, who was dyslexic and therefore never much of a reader.

Every bedroom had a bookshelf. Even my mother’s architectural studio had shelves for books. Books burst from every bookshelf in my childhood home.

When Mike and I were building a new home for our parents, my mother kept asking where the bookshelves would be.

“What’s the big deal with the bookshelves?” Mike asked one day. “We’re book people,” my mother answered.

I feel that defines not only my family, but my tribe — of both journalists and Jews. My mother and sister — who lives in Florida, the true promised land — play Words with Friends every day. We’re words people too.

I was astounded at recent research about how just seeing their parents reading from a book is enough to inspire children to read themselves and to know that the act of reading is meaningful.

Growing up in a book-loving house meant that every time I asked my parents what a big new word meant, they told me to look in the dictionary or the encyclopedia — which I still do.

It gives me tremendous nachas that a word game has made it so big, as opposed to many, many trite hop/jump/dodge games that tend to proliferate now — pale imitations of Frogger and Flappy Bird.

A useful side effect of playing games, according to numerous studies, is that it challenges your mind and is good for your overall mental agility and for keeping Alzheimer’s and dementia at bay.

I don’t speak maths as a first language, so I have never been a fan of Sudoku. My brain game of choice is Mah-jong.

Everybody should stimulate their cortex with such a game, and Wordle remains the best challenge. x