If you’re a keen Wordler – i.e. love doing the daily Wordle puzzles, then don’t read on, unless you have already solved the new weekly challenge. Wordle is a simple on-line puzzle, you have six guesses to find a five letter word. It sounds impossible, and it is a little tricky to begin with until you get your head round it. Quite a lot of people have a specific starting word – I do, mine contains four vowels, others just start with a random word. I think each of us ‘addicts’ have our own way of proceeding. There is another version of the game where there are four words to discover and you work on them concurrently, trying to work out them all at the same time. There is also a sequence Quordle, and moving on there is a puzzle called Octordle because there are eight words to find. It sounds impossible, it isn’t, and can soon become addictive.
Yesterday as I finished the original Wordle, scraping in with five guesses out of the six, another new variation appeared. it was try Weekly Wordle, a new challenge, and I guessed it was going to be really hard. It seemed quite straightforward and then it dawned on me, I had guessed three consonants and one vowel, and none of the other vowels were available and the one I had only appeared once in the word. I was stumped and began to think it was impossible – I had only one go left, and I was struggling.
Suddenly from nowhere, I had the memory of my friend J who I wrote about a few days ago, enunciating a most peculiar word. If you are yet to do the Wordle Weekly Challenge, don’t read on! I can’t now remember why she was telling us, but she was saying there are not only five vowels in spoken English, but a sixth which has no symbol of its own and this is how Wikipedia demonstrates:
- ⟨a⟩, as in about
- ⟨e⟩, as in taken
- ⟨i⟩, as in pencil
- ⟨o⟩, as in havoc
- ⟨u⟩, as in supply
- ⟨y⟩, as in sibyl
- unwritten, as in rhythm
So what is the word J first told me about and which I remembered for the Wordle? SCHWA – that’s what it is, schwa!
Lois Elsden 