How I broke my Wordle streak

This is how I broke my Wordle streak on Tuesday, February 17, after 1148 games.

The issue started the day before, when my wife and I were visiting our daughter at college in western Massachusetts. Unfortunately, the speaker for the Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library on Tuesday fell ill on Monday. His doctor recommended that he rest for 48 hours.

So for a couple of hours, I tried to get online to contact other possible speakers, but to no avail. It didn’t help that the hotel’s Internet was wonky, which made the process more stressful and difficult. Finally, another FFAPL convener and I and I suurendered. So my wife and I wouldn’t need to rush back to Albany on Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile, this guy from the local NBC-TV affiliate, whom I did not know, texted me to see if I was still having difficulty with my mail.  I said yes, but he didn’t follow up. Fine.

Tuesday morning, the hotel Internet was still spotty. After breakfast, my wife, daughter, and I went to the Mead Art Center. The daughter had to leave for a school meeting, but we eventually met at the Yiddish Book Center.

News

While my wife and I were leaving town, I received another text from the Channel 13 guy. Did I want to be on the news that night? Well, okay, but I’m a couple of hours away. Also, and I didn’t tell him this, my wife REALLY wanted to stop somewhere to eat.

So, while my wife was driving, I was composing in my head what to say to the reporter. About 15 minutes after we got home, the reporter and cameraman arrived and recorded me for about 6 minutes, 30 seconds of which made it into the piece.

We had to unpack, then watch the news.  I was about to go to bed when I realized that I still hadn’t done Wordle yet. But I couldn’t get on before the midnight hour.

Once I realized that the streak was done, I was a little sad. I mean, if I had gone down because I hadn’t found the word, THAT would have been okay.

But it really bugged me when I got those notices to keep up my single-digit streak. Getting over 50 somehow was oddly gratifying.

In retrospect, I should have expected that I’d eventually forget to play. My pattern each day was to ask my wife whether she had played yey. But she quit playing on February 2, Groundhog, when Wordle repeated a word, which I believe was CIGAR, the first word. She decided to quit right then. I had no one to remind, which would have aided me in reminded myself. 

So it goes. 

The last 100 games

Still, zero ones. 11 twos,  51 threes, 26 fours, 11 fives, 1 six, for a 3.4 average. My current average overall for 1500 games is 3.75.

A few interesting games; the numbers indicate how many words are left.

Wordle 1,758 4/6

AROSE 19

ABLED 1

AGLET 1(!)

ALLEY

Aglet is too obscure to have been the word, the WordeBot insisted. Do you know the word aglet?

Wordle 1,751 5/6

AROSE 111

BOWEL 13

MENTO 2

ODEON 2!

ENVOY

Another too difficult word.

Wordle 1,748 2/6

AROSE 4

SOBER.

As the old song says, “What’s the use of getting sober when you’re gonna get drunk again?”