Wordle, a popular brain game, has not only taken over Fruita Monument but the world as well. The daily game can be found on the “New York Times” web page along with many other challenging brain games. 

When starting to play, Wordle can seem difficult, but if you know a couple of five-letter words, you are off to a great start. Wordle is an internet game in which you are presented with 30 boxes and you have to type five-letter words in the six different rows. If you get a green box, you have the correct letter in the correct space. If you get a yellow box, you have the correct letter in the wrong space, and if you get a dark grey box, the letter is not present in the word. 

The object of the game is to challenge your peers or yourself to get the right answer with the least amount of rows filled up. You have to come up with a random word for your first try until you get a green or yellow box, and you only get a total of 6 tries to get it right. 

Social media influencers including Malala Yousafzai and Richard Osman have been known to post their Wordle scores daily on Twitter as the game gets more popular. They will add a graphic of their wordle “chart” using the colored square emojis. The “chart” is a mock-up of what your wordle squares look like after you have either gotten the wordle or not. Along with this chart, influencers and others who enjoy sharing their chart might add the number of the Wordle and their “score”. The “score” is how many rows you had to fill to get the word; it is shown to you after you finish playing.

In a short survey, it was concluded that roughly 70% of Fruita students have heard of or know what Wordle is, but only 50% engage in the daily activity. Fruita Monument teacher, Mark Garske says, “I played a handful of times since November, but have been playing just about every day for the last couple of weeks.” He enjoys sharing his score with his wife. “she got me hooked.”. 

There seems to be a buzz surrounding Wordle and the competition of who can get the word first. Garkse believes that the game got popular due to “some high profile individuals, Jimmy Fallon” for example, advertising its rising fame. 

 Sophomore Quinton Jones believes that people just see others playing the game and decide to start playing as well, making it addicting because of how quick yet competitive the game can be. 

The many people playing may disagree with Jones when he states “after a while of playing it, you start to understand what letters you need to start with and how to get the letters you need, so it becomes easier”. 

 Garske believes it doesn’t get easier but there definitely could be a good method to get the word faster based on the most used letters. 

More common letters in everyday words include, “r”, “s”, “t”, “e”, and “a”. These are a part of a lot of words and could help you if you can use more than one of them in your first guess, but going back to Mr. Garske’s belief, the words are randomized and can have the most unique letters within them.

 A good way to get a better understanding of what the Wordle of the day could be is to brush up on some vocabulary, especially words that contain only five letters. As more and more students and staff use and play the game, it will become more competitive, but this can become an advantage, especially for growing people’s vocabulary as they want to learn more words to be able to “win”. Wordle could potentially become a way to help teens and adults brush up on not only random five-letter words but also word structure when having to think about every possible way that two “i”s and two “v”s could fit into a five-letter word. Thus, keeping people’s minds working logically.