The simple word game Wordle went viral during lockdown ... are you still playing?

I actually think I've mastered it. Refined the art of sensible word choices that take the guessing out of guessing.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, where have you been? Wordle is a browser-based word puzzle that gives you six chances to guess the five-letter word.

Its developer Josh Wardle (I love that, too) created it back in 2021 as a gift for his puzzle-loving girlfriend during the pandemic. The two used to snuggle on the couch while she solved it and just months later millions of people worldwide were doing the same thing. The puzzle, not the snuggling maybe, but nothing like solving a word puzzle together.

In January, The New York Times acquired the game for an undisclosed amount "in the low seven figures", it was reported. Across the globe, fans were upset (five-letters), worried that they'd have to pay for it. I'm still playing for free. I assume everyone else is too.

The spirit of Wordle lives on. And to me that spirit points to some good things that came out of the pandemic, when we were all locked down. A community built around the game. People knew not to share spoilers, or give up the word of the day. Sure some people got rather competitive and smug about it all. I know of sites which fill spreadsheets with daily words and player statistics, announcing a winner at the end of every week.

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I'll admit if I fluke a two- or three-turn guess, I might post it to Facebook, "pride" (five letters) is a terrible thing sometimes. But it's nice to know that a few friends are also long-time players, that we're still connected in some way even if we're now apart.

In March, Canberrans were named the world's best Wordle players. An analysis of Twitter data revealed our average score was 3.58, ahead of Jerusalem and Malmo, Sweden, both on 3.66 guesses. Australia accounted for four of the top 10 cities globally.

And this despite the controversial American spelling of words such as "vigor" and "favor" which stumped many of us Down Under.

We also worked out that consonants were more important than vowels. Tips that we published in March included the use of a strong opening word with multiple vowels. "Audio" was a favourite, but we quickly said "adieu" to that idea. Now we start with words such as "stark" or "bring", which we find bring us more luck.

I've realised that the second word is most important. If I go with something like "cheat" for the first guess and get nothing, I "sound" out the second word.

I did go through a phase where my starter word reflected my mood. "Alone", "heart", "angry", or "beach" when I was dreaming of a "break".

I "shift" between playing it late at night or first "thing" when I wake up. An early-morning win always sets the tone of the day, I'm "happy" if I snag it.

There have been hundreds of offshoots. For a while I would do them all, Worldle and Globle which were geography based were fun, Quordle, Octordle and Sedecordle too, with their four, eight and 10-letter grids.

I never got into the number-based Nerdle, or Heardle where you had to identify a song from a short audio clip.

Taylor Swift even had her own Taylordle, guessing her songs.

Canberra jumped on the bandwagon too, when an Australian National University maths student, Aden Power, invented Suburble, where you had to guess the Canberra suburb from its outline.

I often wonder why I'm still playing. I'll never spend more than two minutes on it, but most days it only takes two minutes to remind myself I'm kind of clever. A little bit of self validation.

But I like it too, that Worldle is one thing to come out of the pandemic that was good fun.

Like spending more time with people we love, not commuting, reading more, doing less, discovering our neighbourhoods and exploring the back of our pantries.

Sure, many people did it tough during lockdown, but for me there was a kind of "peace" about it and I miss that.

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