I thought it would be impossible

I’m about to do something I’ve not done for a while, quite a long while in fact, and it’s a particular sort of writing challenge. It’s one I’ve done before but not for a while, and it starts with me completing a word puzzle. Many if not most people have heard of Wordle – a word puzzle challenge to find a five letter word in six guesses. The first time I heard of it I thought it would be impossible – there are thousands and thousands of English words (I just checked and it’s 171,476 today) and there must be quite a quantity with just five letters (I just checked that too and there’s no consensus) However, with a little practice and having a large vocabulary (as a great reader and a writer, I think I have) I’ve found that most days I succeed in finding the the mystery word.

I think most people who regularly do Wordles, have a system. My starter word used to be ‘naive’ for some reason, but then I changed it to ‘adieu’ as it has four vowels. In all the time I’ve been doing this little puzzle, I have never got a score of 1, but I have had a very occasional 2. I usually manage to find the mystery word, but occasionally I’m stumped, particularly if it is a word like ‘parch’ which has similar words such as larch, march, porch, perch, marsh etc.

As well as Wordles, there are Quordles where the aim is to find four words simultaneously, and then Octordles where there are eight! Obviously, you have more guesses – in Quordles you have nine guesses, and in Octordles, you have thirteen guesses to find your eight words. So this is where the writing challenge comes in – I solve an Octordle and then I have to use the eight words in the answer within the story I’m writing. I don’t allow myself to say “I don’t like those words” or “how on earth can I use that word?” I just have to do it.

I am now going to do a puzzle, if you can just wait for a few moments…

I’m back! My score was sixty-four, and my words to include in a story are: PLUME, LOOSE, SPILT, FACET, EDICT, SADLY, NIECE and GAFFE. I have no idea at the movement what I’ll write, but I will report back…

My featured image is of my little good luck Mojo.