Life Lesson from Wordle

Wordle is a simple game where you need to guess a five letters word in six attempts. After each attempt, you receive a feedback to improvise your guess. The game is addictive because it contains an element of luck and who doesn’t like to tryout the luck? Moreover, the game tracks your streak of wins. Humans love long streaks.

I figured out two strategies to play the game. One is to include the feedback in the iterative attempts and guess the word accordingly. However, I recently end up losing because of this strategy. The strategy is greedier in nature. The second strategy is to use fifteen different letters in the first three attempts. Then you have a better sense of the word and a way higher probability of winning. However, it is tough to accept that I cannot win in the second or third attempt. I want to put forward an analogy here from Buffet’s quote, “No one wants to win (get rich) slowly.” I have won the game previously through the greedy strategy in second as well as third attempt, but once I won in quick attempts, I became greedier. It becomes the habit to try winning the game in lesser attempts. However, on some days the odds are not in our favor and eventually we end up losing.

The onus is on us to choose whether to win the game slowly or to win the game quickly. The odds may be in our favour in winning the game slow, but everyone wants to do it quickly. I had learned this life lesson before through some articles, but this time I learned it through experience. It is tough to stay aloof from the instant gratification and win slowly. Tortoise taught us this long time back “slow and steady, always win the race” and wordle taught me the same lesson practically.