Wordle Postgame Report, September 20

GAMES OF SKILL AND CHANCE DEP'T.

New Zealand: A Māori chief with facial moko tattoo, Sydney Parkinson, 1769. Head and shoulders portrait of a Māori man, his hair in a topknot with feathers and a bone comb, full facial moko, a greenstone earring, a tiki and a flax cloak. He has a small beard and a moustache. Sydney Parkinson (1745-1771) was the artist on Captain Cook's first voyage to New Zealand in 1769. Tā moko is the permanent body and face marking by Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. Traditionally it is distinct from tattoo and tatau in that the skin was carved by uhi (chisels) rather than punctured. This left the skin with grooves, rather than a smooth surface. Captain Cook wrote in 1769: 'The marks in general are spirals drawn with great nicety and even elegance. One side corresponds with the other. The marks on the body resemble foliage in old chased ornaments, convolutions of filigree work, but in these they have such a luxury of forms that of a hundred which at first appeared exactly the same no two were formed ALIKE on close examination'. The tattooists were considered tapu, or exceptionally inviolable and sacred. (Photo: Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.

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.

September 20, ALIKE, 3/6

THE OPENING PLAY of CLANG rang up a green L and a yellow A. Good start, informationally. What if the A went before the L, and I tried out some more vowels? ALONE was already out. How about ALIVE? Everything but the V turned green. Not a V, then, but a K. Fair word, very normal. The answer would be all but identical to the almost-answer. 

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