Solve relationship riddle in one easy Wordle

I’m not a runner. But every morning, I race against the 06:00 news. The beginning of the headlines is my cue to log onto Wordle and rush solve the daily puzzle before the weather. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don’t, but the challenge always leaves me alert, sharp, and ready to go.

In case you have missed the past few months, Wordle is an online game in which the user is tasked with finding the correct five-letter word in no more than six tries. Much like Mastermind, correct letters in the correct place turn green, correct letters in the wrong order turn orange, and incorrect letters remain grey. It’s magnificent in its simplicity, and it has taken the world by a storm. So much so, that the New York Times has recently purchased it for “low seven figures”, whatever that means.

Earlier this week, I needed to address a young married couple and realised, in a bit of an epiphany, how much we can learn about relationships from the game of Wordle. Whereas I’m certain there are more, here are some ideas:

1. Spend a bit of time on it every day. Maybe a little longer than it takes someone to read the news. But you know what I mean;
2. Don’t make the relationship so complicated that you dread going back the next day. Keep it simple enough to “solve”;
3. Sometimes you won’t win. And that’s ok. Because there’s always tomorrow when you get to try it all again;
4. You don’t need to post your “score” to social media. If you don’t get that, please ask a teenager to explain it;
5. There will be days when you get all the letters correct but still get the wrong answer. Because as much as you think you’re right, there’s still something that you’re missing. It’s not appropriate to say that men will relate to this, because that might be bordering on sexist, so I will rather acknowledge that in my own experience of 31 years of marriage, there are times that I have had conversations thinking I was chatting about something where my wife was talking about something completely different. Turns out, it wasn’t a metaphor;
6. Celebrate the daily wins. It might not be a big deal to have guessed the word “stone”, but you did. And when the letters turned green it felt good. Really good. And you felt proud. And clever and that you could face the challenge of the day ahead. That’s what celebrating a relationship does. It gives you the strength to face pretty much anything. Provided you celebrate it.

There are more. I’m certain of it. That’s the reason Wordle is popular and that’s why I might not be a runner. But I race against the headlines to make sure that my relationship remains intact.