Friday, March 04, 2022

Worldle

I wonder how many people are giving up Wordle for Lent this year, worried that it is already taking over their lives? I say that I don't play every day anymore, which is technically true, and I skip Dordle and Quordle about 50% of the time now. I do still play Worldle, the geography-based one.  I am pretty good at just recognising the shape of many countries, but if you look at a world map you will see that Serbia is shaped a lot like Bolivia, just a very different size - and you don't get the relative size from just the outline. It matters when you get told that whatever you are looking for is 12,000 km west from Papua New Guinea, and not having a clear idea of how far that is except "really far," are trying to remember the exact shape of Kenya vs Sierra Leone.  After which you will find that you have confused each of them with some other nearby country.

But it can be fun to work from clues, such as noticing that something looks like a coastline, not a mountain boundary, running NW to SE and realising there aren't many places where that happens.

All that said, do not start that game today, March 4.  Do not. Or if that sort of challenge only inspires you, you can take it as a hint that it's place you would ordinarily not think of.  Which you would know the instant you looked at the outline anyway. Even with a map, you are not getting it on your first guess, and probably not your second.

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