Are you playing Wordle, the game flavor of the month?
Over the last couple of weeks, as my Facebook page blossomed with shared grids documenting others’ Wordle game outcomes, I had to investigate. I mean, I’m always up for a good word game. So, I went to the site, tried it and was immediately hooked. I love the simple concept, but also the fact that there’s no way it can become a time suck. (With only one new game per day, you can’t go wrong!) Also, since everyone is trying to guess the same word, you can get a competition going with family and friends.
Then, the brilliant Buffy Silverman suggested using Wordle word guesses to create a poem. Count me in! She didn’t impose any other parameters (though she suggested that it should be “vaguely coherent”), but for some reason I decided I needed to use my words in the order I guessed them. I am now having way too much fun doing this and it’s brought a whole new level to my Wordle enjoyment. Here are a few of my efforts:
Word guesses: mouse, stare, spire, shire
Winter in the Night Garden or Whose garden is this anyway?
As I watch through the window
a wee mouse
scales hummocks of snow
stops to stare at me
with unblinking eyes
then turns to wend its way
through the tangled spires
of faded stalks and blossoms
foraging for seed
within its garden shire.
©Molly Hogan
Word guesses: windy, harpy, prosy, proxy
Beware
On these windy days
the air spirals
into harpy mode
keening, crying
clawing at my skin.
No prosy commentary
on the value
of rest and winter retreat,
this is a full-on assault.
Wind as Mother Nature’s proxy.
©Molly Hogan
Word guesses: pared, plums, pinch, point
After the Argument
With one eye on me
she pared down the mound of fruit
ruthlessly discarding dented apples
rejecting dusky plums
giving the lone kiwi
a sharp-fingered pinch
tossing each
with a decisive thud
into the heaping compost bin
I got the point
©Molly Hogan
Here’s a recent round of guesses. Is there a poem lurking within them? Feel free to get inspired!
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Tabatha Yeatts at her blog, The Opposite of Indifference.
Nix the comfort zone 
Thanks for sharing your brilliance, Molly! Recycling your word guesses into poems is ‘twice as nice’. When approaching puzzles, I’m prone to ‘cross words’. 😉
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Ha! I’m also a big fan of a different kind of “cross words”
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“I got the point.” 🙂 I LOVE the fun you are having with this, Molly! You’ve reminded me too of the Hobbit with “shire.” xo
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“Shire” was definitely the toughest word to work around for me! These little poems have been a great focus for the past week or so and have kept the emphasis on fun.
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I love the mouse one the best, maybe because of a recent encounter with one. And interesting: wind as Mother Nature’s proxy.
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This one was inspired by my recent mouse encounter 🙂 Proxy posed some difficulties and I’m still not positive it works here, but oh well! lol
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Really enjoyed your Wordle poems, Molly! Donna is writing Absurdle poems, so I was just looking Absurdle up: https://qntm.org/files/wordle/index.html (I don’t understand it yet.)
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I have heard of Absurdle but I haven’t checked it out yet. I also noticed Donna’s Absurdle poem but haven’t had a chance to check that out either. It’s been a week! Thanks so much for hosting today and thanks for the link, too.
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I love the “point”, just started playing, Molly, but I still do an early morning Pangram, hard to stop. You all are hooking me, I will start collecting words! Well done!
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I’ve been doing the NYT pangram every day recently. I enjoy that too 🙂 Anything that helps me procrastinate. 🙂
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Thanks for sharing. I haven’t gotten caught up in this craze but your poems make me want to try it out. Word choice is the thing in poetry. I love how these words led you to a unique perspective for each poem.
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Hmmmm ditto for me on this, Margaret. I did see the poems that Donna Smith shared on fb and got more curious. It’s not like I don’t have enough going right now, but some things are too interesting to pass up. I love this poetry community.
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Doing this reminds me a bit of Sandford Lyne’s word pools.It might be fun to try to write several poems from one string of word guesses.
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Oh, I do love a harpy wind! Your imagination is really ticking away with these words. I love what you do with them! This is quintessential Molly…brilliant observations with interesting words. Sighing with joy here. I haven’t tried wordle yet. Hmmm.
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Thanks, Linda. I hope you give Wordle a try. If you like word games, you’ll definitely like it. I play a number variation of this with my class sometimes and they love it.
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fun exercise–so far I have not been successful at wordle
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We’re getting a bit competitive in my family!
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What I’m struck by is how different your guessing strategy is from mine, Molly! But using the words like this is also how we play Bananagrams…when you’re done you have to improvise a flash fiction using your words in any order. Surprising how well that works, and yours are hanging together interestingly too. My favorite is “Beware.” I’m intimidated by trying one that starts with grain and ends with robot (although as I type that I begin to get an inkling…don’t you love your brain’s ability to do that?)
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I don’t have much of a strategy, Heidi, other than trying to have at least 3 vowels in my first word guess. I think of a few words and choose the one that “sits right.” Mouse was because I’d seen one the night before. Windy was because it was howling outside, etc.. By the way, I love your Bananagrams twist. That’s a family favorite here! PS I actually got a rather grim poem out of that last word set…
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Okay, I’m in. First I had to give up my “win the game” strategy of always using a word with almost every vowel as my first choice, just to get things rolling. Now I’m trying to stretch things out with interesting words that might also solve the puzzle. A whole different strategy. I tried Absurdle, but I’m not sure I like playing a puzzle that’s trying its hardest to defeat me. Still, I got 7 interesting words on my first play…we’ll see what poems come of these.
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Mary Lee, I start with words that have at least three vowels and go from there. I don’t spend too much time trying to pick the words once I’m started, just go with what fits the clues. I still haven’t checked out Absurdle but I’m going to have to do that…Can’t wait to see your wordle poems.
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Oh, I have been watching this, but was not sure. I i will be back but wanted to find out if you saw my email of a few days ago? If not I will re-send.
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I don’t think I did Janet. Can you send it again? Did you send it to a gmail account?
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Yes. Got it from Margaret. Will resend and it is updated so better.
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Molly, you have taken WORDLE to the next level. Amazing work.
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It’s definitely added a layer of enjoyment for me! 🙂
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Fun post Molly, your first poem placed me in “The Secret Garden…” I like your “harpy mode” and “prosy commentary” and all the alliterating p’s in your last poem, thanks!
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Thanks, Michelle. I had to laugh because all those alliterative Ps were unplanned. They were only there because the P in my first word guess was in the correct space so I kept it there for all my other guesses. lol
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So glad I inspired you–I especially love that wee mouse! I have not kept up with my own wordle guesses, but I’ll take a barely coherent stab at yours:
Wheat grain brushes and chatters
at the tips of tall stalks,
sending their query aloft–
wondering how to secure their forts,
protect their precious seed heads
from the murderous motor,
the ruinous robot,
the tractor that never stills?
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Wow! That’s pretty fantastic, Buffy! (And a bit disturbing!) I haven’t kept up with the poems either, but I’m trying to remember to keep a list to go back to later. It’s a great quick prompt. Thanks so much for the inspiration. It was quite timely for me–a very welcome distraction. 🙂
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