A recent game that I have been obsessed with is New York Times Wordle. A little background on the game: daily word game where every 24 hours there is a new word of the day. The player gets six chances to guess a randomly selected five-letter word. The main mechanics of the game is the player needs to enter a 5 letter English word each round to guess the word. They need to make the best guesses base on the game feedback from their previous guesses.
As shown above, if you have the right letter in the right spot, it shows up green. A correct letter in the wrong spot shows up yellow. A letter that isn’t in the word in any spot shows up gray.
The dynamics of this game involve utilizing both luck and knowledge about the English language to guess the word in the least amount of tires. Players can also get better at the game the more they play.
The most obvious aesthetics is challeng as the player has a fixed number of tires to get the word. Individual players can develop their own style of playing and come up with their own strategies. Some like to guess the vowels first and some like to figure out all the letters in the word without caring about their position first. My go-to first word is always QUERY or CRANE. My favorite aspect of the game is that despite it being a one-player game everyone around the world is playing the same game each day making one of its aesthetics fellowship. This allows the game to be social; anyone can strike a conversation with “did you to today’s wordle yet?” or “today’s was tough!” To make the game even more social and competitive, another mechanic of the game is that once you have successfully or unsuccessfully done the puzzle for the day it allows you to share your results with anyone. Over text it looks like this:
(the chat history between me and one of my friends is solely wordle scores)
Note that the letters are not revealed. All that is shown are yellow, green, and gray boxes documenting your journey guessing the word. This allows you to show off your process to others without spoiling the word.
Another aesthetic of the game is submission as this game is very easy to get your hands on and only access to the internet is required to get started playing. In addition, the simplicity makes it a perfect game for pastimes.
