Valentine’s Day Special: My Current Favourite Love Story Is Wordle. Word Games Over Mind Games, Any Day!

Valentine’s Day Special: My Current Favourite Love Story Is Wordle. Word Games Over Mind Games, Any Day!

Okay, I am obsessed with Wordle. And not in an “Oh I need to do it every day without fail” kind of way. But more like, “Wow, really, isn’t this just hangman, the game I was termed a nerd for playing on my phone, while everyone else was playing cool stuff like Angry Birds or PUBG?” Yep, for us writers, who were once school kids obsessed with the Scholastic book fair, and who sought emotional support from our English teachers and Harry Potter, crossword puzzles and word games were our childhood adventures. While other kids our age were finding love while playing basketball or badminton, we hoped to bump into someone at the library who’d know what a gerund is, didn’t judge our obsession with Twilight, and could spell Onomatopoeia without needing an auto-correct. And so, if you ask me today, on Valentine’s Day, what my favourite love story is, I have to say, it is Wordle.

Wordle: Ek Prem Katha

Wordle has an origin story that makes me ditch all my Raj from DDLJ fantasies and wish I had a Josh Wardle in my life who loved me enough to create a word game for me. Wardle, for those unaware of this addictive game’s origins, is a software engineer from Brooklyn according to a New York Times profile about the game. Yes, the very New York Times that has now purchased it, but never you mind that. We’re talking about love here, and believe it or not, Wordle has an Indian connection. 

You see, Wardle’s partner is actually an Indian American named Palak Shah, who loves word games. Wardle created a fun, basic game for just the both of them to play, and put a nice spin on his own last name to christen it. Thus was born Wordle. However, it was born with great destiny because soon enough, it wasn’t just the couple and their friends and family who were playing the game. In October sometime, Wardle released Wordle to the whole wide world, and it was merely days before it became a total rage, with hundreds of thousands of people playing it.

Also Read: Indian Adaptation Of Prime Video’s ‘Modern Love’ Series Announced on Valentine’s Day. NGL, I’m Intrigued

What makes Wordle so addictive? It’s love, but a different kind

What’s something people love more than humans and pets these days? Social media. And Wordle has a nifty way of letting us make it a part of our social feeds without much of a hassle. What’s perhaps even more fascinating is that the otherwise spoiler-spilling janta on Twitter is bound by an unspoken covenant of sorts, where everyone tweets their World score but rarely divulges the word. It’s an understanding that we do or we die on that hill, but we respect the efforts of other people who might attempt the game at 3 am in their respective time zones.

When the word is a tough one, you’ll see them united in solidarity, complaining about how, if they had just one more chance, they could’ve cracked it. And when someone really nails it in the 2nd or 3rd row, you’ll see praise pouring in from unlikely quarters too.

Clearly, this is a love story that is constantly evolving and making us evolve with it. Or at least, our vocabulary.

Why Wordle makes me feel single AF

Modern dating sucks, okay. People aren’t willing to write entire words in their dating app bio. The guy I was hooking up with won’t commit to a monogamous friends-with-benefits situation. And here is this man who just woke up one day and decided to make his companion a word game. I don’t know if you understand it, but for someone who loves this genre, it’s the equivalent of building a Taj Mahal.

I mean sure, Wordle is now sold and it has made Wardle very rich, I’m sure. But even in all that, the fact that this could totally be a rom-com version of The Social Network makes me wonder, how do I find men like that?

Anyhoo, I don’t have a date or any V-Day plans so I’ll just go and…

Wordle 240 4/6.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Jinal Bhatt

A Barbie girl with Oppenheimer humour. Sharp-tongue feminist and pop culture nerd with opinions on movies, shows, books, patriarchy, your boyfriend, everything.

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