The Wordle Postgame Report is a brief analysis of a game of Wordle, the five-letter-word guessing game now owned by the New York Times. If you do not play Wordle, Indignity encourages you to please skip this item. The existence of the Wordle Postgame Report does not constitute an endorsement of playing Wordle, not playing Wordle, or of the New York Times.
November 2, INEPT, 5/6
IT WASN’T THE wisest move, tactically, but I opened with a low-frequency letter J, in JUICE, trusting the abundant vowels to make up for it. On cue, the I and the E turned yellow. The important thing was to place them—so important, I didn't mind using another uncommon letter, in VIDEO. The I and E were still yellow, and the other spaces remained gray. I felt the urge to move the I and E in tandem again, completing the pattern from 3 and 5 to 2 and 4 to 1 and 3, but I couldn't think of the right word to do it with. The word I could think of was SKEIN, a terrible Wordle answer, nothing a proper Wordle player would play. I couldn't think past it though, so I stuck it in. Green E at last, a still still-yellow I, and a long-awaited third letter, a yellow N. The I had to go either at the end or the beginning. I tried to think of what would work with an -NI ending for a while, gave up, and looked at the first spot. Oh, of course: INERT. My passive gameplay had led me here, to the word form I should have tried on round three. Green, green, green, gray, green. Wrong. Not INERT but INEPT. Every decision was sloppy, every sloppy decision was wrong.
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