May 9, 2025: Daily Game Quirk: Connecting Wordles?

As longtime readers of the Daily Illuminator might have noticed, I enjoy a number of daily games, including Raddle and Align. In the past few months, I've also started mixing up one of the other games I've been playing . . . by combining it with another.

The New York Times has a daily Connections puzzle that challenges you to sort 16 answers into four categories. (Irene Zielinski recently posted her own homage to the format.)

One of the more-venerable daily puzzles is Wordle, which challenges you to guess a five-letter word within six guesses.

Since I'd been getting a bit burnt out on the daily "Wordle" strategies, I decided to mix things up for myself by combining these two games.

Once I solve a Connections puzzle, I take a five-letter word from that puzzle as my first guess. (I originally had it as the first five-letter word, but I realized I could "cheat" and just coordinate my Connections answers to make the five-letter word I wanted appear first. Nowadays, I just pick the word that seems most interesting to me.) In this way, I'm always starting out with some word that wasn't on my mind until a few minutes prior. And it's satisfying when I get a two- or three-answer guess with an oddball starting word.

Of course, sometimes I'm hoisted on my own petard with this methodology, and the only five-letter word is something like MUMMY . . .

– Steven Marsh

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