THE WEEK 5 IDEA THAT ATE 9 HOURS OF MY LIFE I’LL NEVER GET BACK:
So I’ve wanted to write The Great American Wordle Crossword ever since the game became popular. The best one I’ve seen is Brendan Quigley’s AVCX here, and this one by me was pretty good as well. But (cue ominous music) I got an idea that I thought would top them all…
It was: solvers are told they’re looking for a five-letter word found in one of the puzzle’s clues. Then there are only three five-letter words in the grid, symmetrically placed at 1-A, the central entry, and the omega-Across. That’s strange and worth looking into, and after a while they’d notice that each of the five entries crossing those 5-letter words was an object of a specific color — either green, yellow, or gray. For example, in one iteration I had something like SAGE (the herb, which is green), EDAM (yellow) and ASH (gray) crossing a five letter word (SEPTA, I think) at 1-A.
The color of the letter would indicate its Wordle status — green (like the S in SAGE) meant the S in the contest answer word was in the first space, E in EDAM meant it was somewhere in the answer word (but not 2nd, and not 1st since SAGE was there), and A was nowhere in the answer word (since ASH is gray).
So you’d get these green-yellow-gray clues on the 15 letters in these three five-letter entries, and then find the one word in one of the clues that would fit using Wordle rules.
Woulda been very nice, but it’s either simply impossible or just beyond my ability. I almost got one of the three regions to work, and if I got one to work, why not the other two as well? But sheesh, there’s a lot going on, so I’m just going to chalk it up to “not meant to be.” Stings a bit, though, since the aha moment would’ve been memorable. But life goes on, and our Week 1 replacement is Wordle-y as well (see instructions below).
I AM THOR:
Well, not really. Deb Amlen and I got name-checked by Drew Barrymore and Natasha Lyonne this week, however.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a five-letter word that’s a common first guess in Wordle.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.
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