My Unforced Wordle Error

I’ll make this fairly brief, and try not to let it spoil my day, but I am frustrated and chagrined.

I was going along, with 202 Wordles in a row which I had gotten correctly, 217 out of 218 altogether.

I did yesterday’s puzzle. My third guess was SCRUM, and it showed S-RU-, my c and m not being right.

So I guessed SHRUB. I thought the site said that I got it, and so I logged off. Apparently my eyes are not as good as they were; probably, I just thought the last letter, the b, was green for “correct,” not grey, for “incorrect.” And I just logged off, and never came back to the site that day, why would I?

So today I did the wordle, and I got it in three guesses, excellent. But it showed that I had gotten only one in a row, and that my max streak was 202! So I thought there was something wrong with their tabulation. I looked up the wordle answer history, and saw to my great chagrin, that the answer yesterday was SHRUG.

If I had seen that the last letter was not filled in green, but gray, meaning I needed one more letter to get, of course I would have gotten shrug with two more guesses, with shru- being correct, and shrub apparently being wrong. But I did not try, I stopped after four; and I suppose that the site counts unfinished games as losses, since many people undoubtedly stop guessing if they figure they have no chance to get it.

So there went my streak, in the most unfortunate way, not missing the word in six guesses, but stopping after four guesses, being sure the site said that I got the word, and then not going back until the 24-hour window was gone. And of course no one there to explain it to.

I am sure that in elementary school days, I occasionally inadvertently did not answer a question on an arithmetic test, Once, on a more important test, SAT, or GRE, perhaps, I skipped an answer by mistake, and fortunately had time to go back and realize that I was marking in every one wrong, because I thought that I was answering question 41 when I was really answering 42, etc. I went back and fixed it, just in time. How harrowing. And I suppose that at one time or another, I would turn in one of the elementary class tests early. and the helpful teacher would tell me that I forgot to answer question 15, and let me quickly do it.

But this is online, and it is computer, and there are not people to appeal to, “I still have two guesses left, and of course I would have gotten it!!” Tell it to the bots. I cannot get this fixed, and so it will show one in a row, 218 out of 220. Interestingly, it still shows me at 100%, which I was pleased to see change from 99% when I got to 199 out of 200 overall, since that was apparently rounded up from 99.5% at that point. Maybe the Wordle site did not count a miss yesterday, but it just ended my streak number.

In the scheme of things, this would not seem to matter, but I am of course upset about it. It comes from not staring at the screen closely enough, and thinking that the “B” showed green, and not grey.

Do you know the actress Nancy Grahn? Apparently she had a good Wordle streak, and then a few months ago, missed one, and was so upset that she could not sleep! That’s how I felt when I legitimately missed “PERKY” months ago; I lay in bed in the morning, and thought and thought, until I came up with better opening guesses, which I have almost always stayed with since. I figured I would eventually miss one, but not this way!

Well, thank you for indulging me in this story. There is a lesson here, but I do not know what it is, except to be more painstaking. I’ve filled out checks wrong, too, but they come back, to be fixed. At least I didn’t buy something on the internet by hitting the wrong button, which I guess people do sometimes. Do I get to file an Appeal here, like the Republicans do every single time they get a decision that they don’t like? No, this is a different realm.

There are probably people out there who could take a screenshot showing they got 420 wordles in a row, because they look at the sites which are all over, which give “hints,” and then the answer, and so they never miss one. There is no way to prove it of course. And no one who has a long streak, can prove that he or she did it honestly. So there is that, for a sort of consolation.

Postscript: I found a site where this question was asked, and the small consensus is that if you do not finish a wordle, or forget to do it one day, your streak disappears. That seems ridiculous, but it’s Computertown.