So You Lost Your Streak
A 7-day Wordle Cleanse
by @Dez in Portland, Oregon
See also: https://rentry.co/wordle-meta-list
And the introductory post from October 29, 2023:
https://nyti.ms/3senkRR#permid=128801522
Not nearly as serious as it may sound. With tongue firmly in cheek, we begin!
P.S. (this is a Pre-Script) Cast aside your Previous Solutions or Previously Used list. You do not need that here. It did not save the old streak or you wouldn’t be here. The list will still be there in a week (and seven words longer to boot) should you choose to pick up that burden again, but for now travel light and play freely!
Day 0: Our Mantra
Today you Xed out, or you got too busy and forgot to play for a day, or you crossed the international date line and forgot to employ The Date Trick, or the web (or the sim) glitched and your streak is now gone.
This is our mantra:
The streak is dead, long live the streak!
Repeat as many times as it takes to sink in. Commit to the cleanse. Modes of play, themes and challenges, companions, bots, reviews and even forums may come and go: the streak abides. And do check that you know where your towel is before proceeding! (Don't panic if you don't get that reference. That's a good mantra too but let's not get off track...)
Day 1: ADIEU
HULLO
Turn off hard mode. Play ADIEU
to bid your old streak one final farewell (and never play this word again; at least not until the next time you need this cleanse, but also: see Day 8). No matter what ADIEU
returns play HULLO
next as in “Hul-lo, what’s this, I have a new baby streak to care for? Already?” Yes. Yes you do. Repeat the mantra from Day 0 one more time.
The point today is to play something sub-optimal, unexpected, to get out of your comfort zone while honoring both your old and new streaks. Other possibilites:
- ¡
ADIOS AMIGO
! or ¡ADIOS AMIGA
! if your streak felt feminine. - ¡
ADIOS
!HOLLA
🙌 (and no, that’s not meant to approximate hola 👋 but to be HOLLA! as in I ain’t no hollaback girl,GRRRL
!)
Day 2: PFFTT
/ PHPHT
Play in hard or standard mode. Pick one of the following starter words: PFFTT
(the sound your old streak made as the air was let out of it) or PHPHT
(the sound we make to signal we have our hands in the air like we just don’t care about that tired old streak, look at this shiny baby streak). Also in honor of Bill the Cat. PHOOO
is another excellent play today (shoutout to @Claire, playing an intuitive cleanse as I write this).
Day 3: SRSLY
, XVIII
? NOWAY
!
SRSLY
there are some crazy things you can do in Wordle and get away with it. Like play XVIII
. Seriously, play one or both of these today, or another one or two of the extremely unexpected and yet accepted guess options.
You’re fine. Hard mode? Soft mode? It matters not. Believe not NOWAY
, all is possible. You’re fine. IXNAY
the anicpay, MMKAY
?
Day 4: 5 words, 25 letters
Heterogram hump day! Here we go, hard mode off: see https://rentry.co/w5w25l742 and pick a line, any line and then play ALL five words from it (in any order but you must play ALL five). You might X out but it will be thrilling, guaranteed. And besides, your streak is at most 3 days old, you’ll hardly notice if it gets reset now.
In case that link goes stale but you have found this text somewhere, here’s one of the 25 sets: FJORD
GUCKS
NYMPH
VIBEX
WALTZ
(uses 25 letters: only Q
not used in this set). YES those are all PU or not solutions, did you think I would spoon-feed you a 5-word 25-letter heterogram that might hit on a Solution? There are some of those in the full list: choose wisely!
Day 4.5: Find a WEIRD
Word
Well that was exciting, wasn’t it? How’d you do? Never mind, doesn’t matter, you have homework due before tomorrow:
- Browse the forum and find a word you don’t know or have never seen Wordled before. Post a reply to whoever played it praising their moxie. That’s your starter tomorrow (no, not
MOXIE
, the word played by the person with the moxie to play it before you!)- Keep an eye out for @Roselene Dolce who plays many a strategically strange word (and a hot tip: do NOT get into a Scrabble game with stakes over penny-a-point with her; she's a shark! ;)
- If that doesn’t work, try this list: https://rentry.co/unusuwordles or this one: https://rentry.co/doc-loanwords23 and pick a word you’ve never seen before. Post a note of gratitude to all librarians but especially @Documentalista for being a light against the darkness.
- If that doesn’t work (or if you just prefer this method), then find a group playing a theme or challenge that you weren’t previously following, and post a reply to them that you’re joining them tomorrow. Thank them for their incredibly cool and awesome idea.
- If all else fails, you’re playing
MOXIE
tomorrow. Don’t let us down kid, we’re countin’ on ya.
Day 5: Be Grateful & Kind
Play in hard or standard mode, starting with the word you picked yesterday. Post your results with a note of gratitude towards whoever led you to today’s starting word.
Add another reply to the forum somewhere where it’s needed: a pun, a kind word, welcome a noob and answer their question (yes, nicely!), give kudos to someone who may need a confidence boost.
Bonk at least five other kind or encouraging or funny posts with your magic Recommend wand. Think about what it takes to make a community thrive.
Day 6: Perfect Six
Turn on hard mode. Today you are playing for a Nettleton (shout out to @Ed) i.e. a deliberate six in hard mode.
Start with LEAST
or one of its common anagrams (STALE
, STEAL
, SLATE
, TALES
) or any other starter played regularly by a score-minimizer (lookin’ at you @Eric B and @KP with ARIEL
).
Your goal is to enter the solution on guess six (remember this is a hard mode exercise). This is not easy! You will almost always run out of valid hard mode guesses and solve before guess six.
@Ed strives to meet the requirements of the mythical 'strict' mode in fact: no using dead letters or replaying yellows in the same position (both allowed by hard mode). This makes it even harder to achieve the truly perfect strict Nettleton.
Hint: You know Prof. @Mike's EAROT-LISNC
rule, right? Well this is the ANTI-CLOSER
rule to help you score a Nettleton: Avoid those letters like the plague on guess two! They will push you quickly closer to a forced solution in five or fewer steps.
Optional: Repeat day six until you score a perfect Nettleton. You may need to pick an ANTI-CLOSER
word for your starter, too. Congratulations!
Day 7: Recommence
Time to move on. Pick your own starter: back to your favorite (hope it wasn’t the Solution this week! If it was, please see the sister cleanse: So You Missed Your Ace: A Twelve-Step Guide For Recovering GRIND
-Til-It-Hitsters), or join up with an ongoing theme or challenge group, or start your own, or pluck one from the headlines or whatever the ‘verse drops in front of you. Or play one of the hidden gems like TARSE
or SALET
and see if you can uncover a unique response from the WordleBot (thanks @Mike for the concept of hidden gems!).
Day 8: Give Back
There should be a new version of the So You Lost Your Streak Cleanse available by the next time you need it. If not, improvise your own version of the cleanse and share it.
Find and read (or re-read) a copy of the Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules (try https://designmanifestos.org/sister-corita-kent-immaculate-heart-college-art-department-rules/) and think about that last sentence. Yes, I mean it: really think about that one.
Appendices
Appendix A - Random Walk A Favorite Book
Here's another method to find some starter words to loosen you up and put a spring in your step again: use a favorite book and one standard six-sided die to roll up some random words. I recommend picking three words this way and commit to playing all three, but stop at one or two if you must. Don't override the random results with your own editorial choices! Let the die do the thinking, trust the author's writing, and play it where it lies.
- Take a favorite book off the shelf, one you haven't read for a long time. Best if it has at least six chapters.
- Find a six-sided die. If you don't have one handy, seriously, go to a game store right now and buy yourself a game that comes with dice and invite someone to have a game night tonight. Resume here tomorrow.
- Divide the chapters into six groups if there are more than six. Exactly how doesn't matter, just divvy them up and stick to it.
- Roll the die:
- Roll 1: picks the chapter group (or chapter if there are only six or fewer chapters)
- Roll 2: picks the chapter within the group
- Roll 3: picks the page within the chapter
- Roll 4: picks the paragraph from top of that page (optional rolls 5 & 6 to skip ahead some sentences and words if you're just having too much fun rolling)
- The first five-letter word in the paragraph is your word. While you're here in one of your favorite books, I bet you read that paragraph, didn't you? Wasn't that lovely, what an excellent writer! Maybe resolve to loan this book out (or just give it outright) to a friend or loved one with more capacity to enjoy it than the dust resting on top of its pages has.
- Note: For every step, if the number on the die takes you into another chapter group, chapter, page, or paragraph, just blow past that imaginary boundary to where the number takes you. If you hit the end of the book, wrap around to the beginning and keep counting from the first chapter (or preface or foreword if you included those in your chapter sets).
Here's an example I rolled up for H Is for Hawk (Helen Macdonald, 2014) which conveniently has 30 chapters, so I had six natural groups of five each, but that doesn't matter! Trust the plan, trust the algorithm (and remind yourself that not all algorithms are AI bent on world domination; most are just helpful recipes that turn data into information to help us turn thoughts into action).
Roll # | Item | Word 1 | Word 2 | Word 3 |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Ch. Group | 4 | 2 | 4 |
2 | Chapter | 1 | 3 | 4 |
3 | Page | 5 | 5 | 3 |
4 | Paragraph | 1 | 6 | 3 |
1st 5L Word | FEVER |
YOUNG |
WATCH |
Walks taken:
- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3tu43s @KP: Unsheltered (Barbara Kingsolver, 2018)
- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3uadmi @Julia: Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell, 2004)
- @Eric B and @KP: Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain, 2000)
Appendix B - Generations
Ask someone at least two decades older, or two decades younger than you to pick your starting word. If you can't find someone a generation ahead or behind you to ask for a starting word, think about your life choices. Then channel your inner child or inner ancestor to pick your starting word.
They should also advise you to say NERTS
to me, what do I know about your life? You're fine. Offer them a fist-bump of gratitude and solidarity, and shine on you crazy diamond.
Appendix E - An Exemplary Cleanse
It can be a surprise to no one that @Julia's cleanse after achieving a monumental streak of 478 consecutive wins was one of the best and best-written examples.
- Day 1 - ADIEU, HULLO!
- Day 2 - PFFTT / PHPHT
- Day 3 - SRSLY, XVIII? NOWAY!
- Day 4 - 5 words, 25 letters
- Day 5 - Be Grateful & Kind
- Day 6 - Perfect Six
- Day 7 - An ‘Ettleton
- Day 8 - Generations
- Day 9 - Random Walk a Favorite Book
- Day 10 - Jettleton
Appendix Ella Minnow Pea (LMNOP)
Also known as the recipe for Alphabet Loop, or an AlphaLoop.
Here "loop" is used in the sense that programmers mean it: a repeated set of instructions that can be described with English phrases like "while this is true, do that (and maybe another thing and then another)."
In fact, playing Wordle at all is a loop: while you haven't found the solution and haven't made six guesses, enter a five-letter word, then interpret the results to help you make your next guess.
The AlphaLoop adds just one more condition: make each guess start with the next letter of the alphabet from the previous guess's first letter. This post spells it out in pseudocode:
https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3ucjh0
That's it! No requirement to play a certain number of steps, or play in hard or default mode, plan your words ahead or not, or have a theme - that's all up to you (and community members have explored just about every way to make an AlphaLoop already). Play freely!
Here are some more examples:
- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3u54b3
- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3u8ce5
- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3u8euu
- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3uako7
- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3uhls1
- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3uoeks
Appendix M - The Middleton
All credit to @BerniceDog for inventing this "acrostic-ish" game, and for naming it in honor of Thomas H. Middleton, longtime NYT and Harper’s acrostic constructor.
For more about the classic acrostic form, see:
https://www.acrosticpuzzles.com/our-favorite-constructors/
This is a six-step game, where the first letters of your first five guesses spell out the first guess again, so that your first guess appears both across and down, before you solve on step six.
See these examples from @BerniceDog:
- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3ulq21
- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3umc1p
- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3ur39d
Appendix Z (and J, V, Q, etc.) - The Zettleton (or Jettleton, etc.)
Play in standard mode, i.e. switch off the hard mode setting. Choose your starting letter: Z for a Zettleton, J for a Jettleton, and so on.
Your goal, similar to when playing for a Nettleton, is to solve on guess six.
But your first five guesses must all begin with your chosen initial letter: Z, J, V, etc. Whatever your chosen letter is, you're going to play five guesses starting with that letter, and then enter the solution like a boss on guess six. Or you're going to go down in flames or cravenly give up and whomp the beJxxZxS out of it to save your tiny little baby streak (to which you should NOT be attached yet). Don't be swayed by how cute that little streak is, look away and play like nobody's watching!
You may want to consult a reference such as wordhippo or other handy site to help you find five-letter words that start with your chosen nemesis of a letter. Very unusual words may be required to help you succeed in this quest!
For an extra bit of zip, play a la super ARIEL fiend @KP: plan all five words in advance, then play them all without adjusting for the revealed information as you go. This makes this quest a bit like a heterogram but with fewer letters to work with, so plan carefully! Or improvise as you go, taking results into account. Your choice!
If the author of this cleanse catches you playing a Zettleton (or Jettleton, etc) you may be immortalized on this list:
- Wordle
904 CHAIN
Zettleton - Wordle
1010 SALLY
Vettleton - Wordle
1011 MAYOR
Zettleton - Wordle
1023 VOILA
Lettleton - Wordle
1025 MERGE
Quettleton (!)- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3u963j @Couchpumpkin
- Wordle
1027 LOUSE
Jettleton - Wordle
1045 CRAFT
Wettleton - Wordle
1046 PROWL
Yettleton - Wordle
1047 DIARY
Jettleton (Names)
Honorable mention: a very special case of an Accidentleton (an unintentional solve in six, aka a Phew!) that turned out to be a Whittleton:
- Wordle
962 WHICH
This last game raises the idea of a "perfect" Zettleton too, where the solution matches the chosen prefix letter(s). Not likely to happen, but possible!