Wordle Letter-Switch Game

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And here he is with a feather in his cap and a glint in his eye, our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

You know, as a puzzle guy, it would be remiss of me to ignore the big thing that’s going on. Everybody’s into Wordle. It’s sort of a combination of mastermind as a word game. You take a guess of a word and it tells you how many letters you have in the right position and how many are not in the right position and how many you have wrong. And through process of deduction, you try to deduce the correct word.

You guys have played Wordle, yes?

Oh, yes, definitely.

Oh, good, good.

Now, if you’re lucky when playing Wordle, your penultimate guess is a word with three letters in the correct position and two letters switched. Easy peasy, right? Three greens and two yellows. Sure, I’ll give you a word. Two of the letters can switch places to make the goal word, but which letters those are for you to determine.

So here we go. Just like in the standard game, these are not just strings of letters. They’re Scrabble legal five-letter words, all right? Here we go.

All right. Now, first off, I’ll hit you right in the midsection with the word waste. W-A-I-S-T, waste. Tell me which two letters to switch and what word that makes. It’s not twist. Remember, you’re only switching two letters.

Right.

Weights, I see.

That’s it.

Okay, yes. Well, I hope you’re satisfied. The word is sated. S-A-T-E-D. Sated.

Tased?

That’s a fine word. I’m not sure that’s a Scrabble legal word. I think it might be a capitalized trademark name, but that’s not what I was going for.

I’m not sure either. But what else can you get from sated? Sated. Okay, your colors are yellow, green, green, green, yellow.

Oh, dates.

Dates, yes. Very good. Now, use it to insert a letter. The word is carrot. C-A-R-E-T. Carrot. C-A-R-E-T.

Cater.

Cater, yes, exactly. Green, green. Green, green, yellow, green, yellow. Cater, C-A-T-E-R. Now, careful. It’s explosive. The word is nitro. N-I-T-R-O, nitro.

Intro.

Yes, I should have begun with the intro. That’s very good. From nitro to intro, switching the N and the I to intro. Now, go buy yourself a clue. In Sri Lanka, the word is rupee. R-U-P-E-E.

Puree.

Yes, puree. Delicious. Finally, you finally worked your way through this whole thing. The word is slogs. S-L-O-G-S, slogs.

Can you do gloss?

Yes, you can do gloss. That is the perfect answer. That was the answer I was going for. Nicely done.

This feels like trying to dictate on my phone and all the autocorrect.

Exactly. Sort of like what you’re saying. Now we’ve done it. We’ve done the Wordle thing, and we’ve put it to bed. Congratulations, you guys. You were fantastic. You did it in a very few number of moves. Nicely done.

Thanks, John. We’ll talk to you next time.

Take care.

Thanks, John. And we’d love to talk with you about language, so give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your stories about your experiences with language to words@waywordradio.org.