I Don't Want to Score a 1 in Wordle
Which is about as heavy as today's newsletter gets
Well, this was an embarrassing faux pas. Someone asked me if I played Wordle and I said “You bet your sweet ass I am” because I thought they’d asked if I was a turtle and I flashed all the way back to fourth grade and the September 8 newsletter, “The Unrefined Comedy of Grade Schoolers.”
Turns out there’s no secret answer to the question of whether or not one plays Wordle. It’s a yes or no sort of deal.
And yes, I play. The picture above shows my stats at the time I wrote this piece.
I’ve been stumped 14 times and forgot to play once. But I’m curious to hear from other Wordlers what their stats and goals are. Do I know anyone with a 100%? I assume I have some 99-percenters among my friends and assume many of you have a longer streak than 103 games.
Here’s what I’m shooting for:
1. Get back to a 99% win percentage. This is going to take at least 198 straight wins.
2. Keep the total of my 2s and 3s higher than the total of my 5s and 6s.*
3. Keep the number of 3s at least 20 higher than the number of 5s.
4. Get the total of 2s and 3s higher than the number of 4s.
5. And this is the big one: Get the number of 3s higher than the number of 4s. This might be a futile pursuit but I’m going for it.
Now, here’s the thing: I don’t want any 1s. Scoring a 1 in Wordle is unquestionably a rare event and while I congratulate those of you who have managed to start your game by guessing the exact word the editor has chosen for that day’s puzzle, I don’t want one. Scoring a 1 means you don’t get the play the game that day.
A score of 1 would mean a lot more if the game started you out with a hint, say, a yellow R in the fourth spot. There’s still quite a bit of luck involved but if you get a 1 from that you’ve at least played the game, you’ve used the mental prowess the game is designed to challenge.
Now that I think of it, a hint would make a 1 more meaningful but it would cheapen the 2s and 3s.
I also think maybe I’ve used far more mental prowess on this topic than necessary. And prowess might be overstating it a bit.
But Speaking of Rules Changes…
I did not watch a televised college football game from start to finish until the fall of 2015, which was the first football season I ever spent with my wife Cybil. When I moved to Iowa in 1999, I was aware of the big in-state rivalry between the University of Iowa and Iowa State University, but unlike pretty much every person I met had not chosen a side.
Marrying a major Hawkeye fan made me think that maybe it was time to choose, and choose wisely.
So now, with almost nine full seasons of watching Iowa football behind me, I’d like to propose a rule change regarding kickoffs. Most kickers—certainly those in D1 schools and heck, probably all the others—most kickers know they can put the ball in the end zone so that the receiving team has to take a touchback and start on their own 25-yard-line.
My question is: Why do we have to watch this?
Why do we have to watch it and why do the players have to go through the pretense of lining up for it? If the kicking team knows it’s going for a touchback, it should have the option of not kicking off at all. Immediately after the coin toss or a score, just tell the ref “We prefer not to go through the whole charade of pretending we’re going to let these guys run back the kickoff.”
I’ve put a tad more thought into this than I have into changing the rules of Wordle, so here’s how it would look:
1. Kicking team can choose not to kick off and thus let the receiving team start on their own 25.
2. If kicking team opts to kick off, a ball that goes past the goal line on the fly results in a touchback—but now the receiving team starts on its own 40.
3. Receiving team may still opt for a fair catch on the kickoff. (This forces the kicking team to aim deep—but not deep enough for a touchback.)
4. Receiving team may let the ball bounce into the end zone, but if they do the line of scrimmage is placed at wherever the ball first touches the ground.
Feel free to pass this along to the football powers that be. I don’t want any credit for it. Your increased enjoyment of a game without all the time-consuming touchbacks will be thanks enough for me.
And a Thought About Lotto Games
I don’t blame anyone for hoping to win any of the lotto-game jackpots: Powerball, Mega Millions, Lotto America, what-have-you. I occasionally play these games myself and imagine what I’d do with such a windfall. Travel the world. Start a charitable foundation. Find out what amount Former President Scumbag would accept to shut the hell up for the rest of his life. Ah, it’s fun to dream.
But here’s what keeps me from counting on winning the lottery as a retirement plan. Forget for a minute the astronomical odds against the numbers on your ticket matching up with the official numbers drawn at random. Imagine instead that if you buy a Powerball ticket, your name goes onto a slip of paper that’s placed into a gigantic bowl with the names of all the other players. Your odds are already better, but they’re still not great.
Now imagine that the drawing is held but they don’t announce the winning name yet. All they announce is where the ticket was purchased, and in this case it’s the Pump and Slurp in West Palookaville, which is where you purchased your ticket.
Now you’re competing against everyone who bought a ticket at the Pump and Slurp, which means your odds are the same as if you’d signed up to win a free car wash.
And how often is your name drawn from that hat?
* Yes, I know that according to standard grammatical rules, you should use an apostrophe in the plural of numbers and letters. I just can’t do it. For some reason too many people have mistakenly latched on to that one ridiculous exception for how to make plurals, which is why we get Christmas cards from The Thompson’s and signs that say we’re open on Sunday’s. I refuse to contribute to this insanity.