Online WORD games – win or lose?

I am a word nerd. That rhyme brings me word joy of the Marie Kondo variety! I’m guessing this admission is no surprise to any of you Komunikastians who read these rambles of mine. So it’s probably also no shock when I tell you I spend the first half hour of my day doing online word puzzles. I’ve got friends who play along and we share our results in lieu of a good morning text. They’re my GenX Word Nerd version of Minecraft or Fortnite online mates. Except we do know one another in person and our meet ups are IRL.

Wordle, Quordle, Waffle and Squareword. They sound like characters on SpongeBob but they’re not. They’re my morning brainfood. I start with the same word on all three games that ask for a guess and it has only come through for me on one occasion (not Wordle as when it eventually turns up I’ll never use it again.). Taken best with coffee made by himself, these games are my excuse for picking up my phone before my pen. I tell myself the fact that they’re all about words is justification enough for missing the ‘undefended mind’ timeslot for Morning Pages.

I had a serious Wordle streak going and the first time I bombed out it nearly broke my spirit to realise that my streak was going to have to begin again. Today I happened to look more closely at the statistics screen and found WordleBot. He analyses my performance and then compares me to all the other millions of people who do Wordle online everyday. All of a sudden I felt my joy levels plummet. I may have a streak of 89 days but my skill is 62/99 compared to 90/99 (the NYT average) and my luck is not much better at 67/99! Is it sadistic of me to be glad that at least my luck is impressive??? The NYT ave is 46/99… winner!

Ah, how quickly the joy of accomplishment is dampened by comparison!

And now I’ve added to my morning rituals. I’m learning Spanish in preparation for the Camino. I’ve got 18 months to be prepared as the (self-appointed) translator who will ensure that we know where the toilets are and have ordered the coffees in the morning and the wines in the afternoon.

I’d forgotten the wholebrain pleasure of learning a new language. Gradually the secrets of pronunciation and meaning and grammar are being revealed to me and I literally gasp with surprise when I capture a new word. (This might not make sense but, rest assured, this is normal for word nerds like me)

I’m using DuoLingo as my puerta (door or entry) into the language. It promises to take my skills to about the B2 level . Competent enough to muddle through talking, listening and a bit of reading/writing in a Spanish speaking country. I’ve learned how to find my suitcase (maleta), passport (pasaporte) and ticket (boleto) and ask for a coffee (café con leche). OK, I can do this, bring it on.

And then the inevitable gamification began to creep into my lessons.

What is the point of all this XP stuff? I ask Mr A. He looked at me uncomprehendingly for some time before realising that I truly had no concept of what it was or why I would want it. There’s gems and then I earn double XP and I can buy extra hearts, do I want them? It turns out it wasn’t just Spanish I was about to learn!

I won’t go into the extensive and comprehensive education I received about the value of XP; if you would like this I can recommend at least three highly knowledgeable and articulate teachers who can take you through the details. I didn’t get it… but now it rules my day. You see, there’s a leader board.

I’m not sure when it happened but where I sit on that leaderboard matters. Dúo threatens me with the Demotion Zone if I fail to complete sufficient lessons successfully and earn enough XP to hold onto my position in the league. Every now and then he congratulates me for making it into the Promotion Zone but that turns out to be a tricky place to hold onto unless I allocate hours of time and, ideally, actual dollars, to increase my XP by completing many more challenges and learning more words than the people above me in the league. 

I have no idea who these other people are that I’m competing against in the language learning stakes but they play a huge part in my every day life. I know when the Europeans wake up and do their early morning lessons. I can tell who has a higher membership than me, what feels like an unfair advantage but is probably justifiable given the app is so good. I know who is comparable to me in progress and have judged who I’m actually competing against as if we were in a similar level.

Like Wordle, I hit a point where the angst about maintaining my streak / rating / league position distracted me from the reason I was in the app in the first place. I ignored family and dogs and housework (ok, that wasn’t hard!) for hours one Sunday afternoon to try and retain my Top 3 place in the last 30 minutes of the week only to lose it to someone with what is clearly a pseudonym and full membership to DuoLingo who swept in with 4X XP and moved me firmly back into 5th place. I’m still not over it.

Hang on, remember this is about learning Spanish???

Step back, Melinda, you’ve been word gamed!