How Does Walls Wordle?

It is clear that while Walls students love Wordle, they are skeptical about The New York Times recent acquisition of the daily word puzzle, according to a recent Rookery poll.

In case you have missed the wildly popular craze, here’s a primer. Wordle is the creation of 38- year old Josh Wardle, as a gift to his crossword loving wife. Players get six attempts to guess the word of the day, guided by hints on the positioning and accuracy of letters. Wordle released the daily puzzle to the public late last year and it quickly ignited a habit for scores of wordsmiths around the country. On January 31, The New York Times announced it had acquired Wordle for a seven figure sum.

According to our survey, “trade,” “stare,” and “house” are the most popular opening moves, with about a third of our respondents using these words. A few students use “adieu” and “raise,” which show sound strategy due to the use of many vowels and common consonants.

So, is there a perfect starting word? Many have weighed in, but there is no clear consensus. The Philadelphia Inquirer suggested “oater,” a word for a western movie, is best qualified based on the frequency of its letters. CNN reports the ideal first word is “soare,” meaning a young hawk. This choice is based not only on common letters, but the letter’s positions on the grid as well.

No matter what word you use, according to our poll, only a quarter of students said they would continue using the puzzle if it went behind a paywall. As one respondent said, “NYT is capitalizing on something that makes a lot of people happy to increase games subscription rates and make more money, and I think limiting access to Wordle is really unfair.”