Welcome to The Wordle Review. Be warned: This article contains spoilers for today’s puzzle. Solve Wordle first, or scroll at your own risk.
This month’s featured artist is Mark Pernice. You can read more about him here.
★★★
Wordle 645 3/6
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My starting word is always SMILE, every single time. I don’t really know why, except that I like a universe of controlled potential outcomes and thinking that there is an order that will eventually become clear. But also? What if one day it’s SMILE? Do you know how I’m going to feel on that day?
I know a lot of people start with ADIEU, but I think those people are cynical. As someone raised by religious people, I am prone to thinking that there’s not just magic all around, but that there are messages being sent to me personally. Perhaps a birthday in a two-step verification code sent to my phone will make me think of whomever I’m supposed to think of at that moment. Perhaps a letter combination in a license plate keeps coming up and might as well be a Ouija board if I’m paying attention. But, if I’m cynical, the messages won’t come.
My friend Isaac sometimes begins with yesterday’s word, which is the exact amount of chaos that makes us different. My friend Harley once got the Wordle on his first guess two days in a row. He called me and told me about his triumph in an excited whisper, perhaps because he knows I work at The New York Times, which owns Wordle, but also perhaps just because I work at The New York Times. You know what I mean? I’ve gotten worse pitches is what I’m saying.
Here is one last thing I’ll say: I started playing the Wordle when everyone else did, somewhere inside the pandemic. If you play it enough, it exposes language to be just a finite number of versions. That has made me — me, who once toyed with minoring in linguistics — feel a little listless about English and about words in general. They break into morphemes, which dissolve into letters, which themselves are just these random shapes, and I don’t know. You have to protect yourself from the way things aren’t real in the first place, lest you realize it all isn’t real.
I don’t know if I should be playing Wordle anymore.
Today’s word is UNTIE. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, it’s a verb that means exactly what it sounds like: To loosen or undo something that’s knotted, or to free from restraint, if you’re feeling fancy.
Today’s Statistics
The letter patterns are unique enough that the answer can be found using elimination strategies within six guesses, and the word is very familiar vocabulary with no letter repeats.
Our Featured Artist
Mark Pernice is an award-winning illustrator, art director and designer. He runs the multidisciplinary design studio OOO, alongside his creative directing partner, Elana Schlenker. Pernice injects his personality and style into brand illustrations using a variety of details, textures and messages. “I’m not that interested in making obvious illustrations, and I don’t want to shoehorn in overused visual iconography unless there’s a bit of a fun twist or mystery,” he said in an interview with It’s Nice That.
Further Reading
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