5 min readMar 5, 2022 02:28 PM IST
First published on: Mar 5, 2022 at 03:40 AM IST
This cannot be the word. My head kept refusing what seemed the only possibility even as it tried all other combinations out of the yellow and unused letters on the keypad. I am talking about Wordle. Eventually, frustrated at the non-words I was making at 6 am, since it has become the first thing I do every morning, I punched in RUPEE. Voila! The tiles turned green! (Note to self: three vowels, voila is a good start word). I begin to see the headlines and social media posts that will follow: “This has been made possible because of India’s rising superpower status on the world stage”; “Wordle recognises India as vishwaguru”; “Was this possible under Nehru?”; “The rupee was never taken seriously before 2014?” Never mind that the rupee is the name of the currency of at least six other countries now and was of many more till the mid-20thcentury. Also, never mind that the rupee has been on a downward slide vis-à-vis key foreign currencies for some years. But, to be on Wordle, soon after it had been bought over by The New York Times must mean something.
I yanked myself out of this train of thought. In case I doze off, I do not want early morning dreams of political leaders giving speeches on anything. Till now, the few minutes of reflection that followed getting the Wordle word of the day had been pleasant: They dealt with the curious ways of the brain, which is sometimes unable to see the word staring right at you and sometimes hops over unlikely loops to arrive at the destination. It can also be a humbling experience, for there will always be words that those who aren’t Shashi Tharoor don’t know. “Caulk”, for instance. Now that it has become part of our textual sociality, it allows us to trace the trajectory of others. It is a refreshing alternative to “all is well” conversations. It also yields good jealousies, like what I felt till I hit that first 2/6 score that everyone I knew had achieved.
How long will the Wordle craze last? Why did it become a craze? What are the likely futures of the game in a world that is the most literate ever, and where the ascendance of English has been steady despite the return of revanchist nationalism? We already have interesting predictions and assessments of this phenomenon. Marketing scholar Gaurav Sabnis links its popularity to the “sweet spot” the game has hit in being moderately difficult — thus posing a challenge — but mostly yielding gratification. It provided default contrarians a chance to rack up their social media presence by claiming to be untouched by the obsession. My teacher cousin made it part of her pedagogy by creating her own wordle, wherein she puts a word every day from the ongoing lesson for her students to solve.
It is the spin-offs in other languages that are to watch out for. While linguists have been discussing the suitability of other languages to the wordle format (some have those trauma-causing features like that word ending in -ight brought on for many), I do hope this spurs innovation of word games in other languages. As Indians rapidly lose their multi-linguality, and urban kids grow up with barely passable competence in their parental tongue(s), the smartphone could become our route to retain languages and find our way to regional literature outside of translation.
For long, I have been bothered by the lack of a Duolingo type app for South Asian languages, apart from Hindi. Our land of tech experts and several university centres for languages have not yet come up with ways to make language learning fun and accessible. Yet, as more languages enter endangered and extinct lists, taking with them the unique culture, worldview and knowledge that every language holds, we need creative ways to not just preserve but keep languages alive. Language is what makes us human, as research into cognition and linguistics show. But could language also be the key to saving us from both planetary and self-destruction? Etymology shows the interlinked migrant history of our species and is a counter to linguistic chauvinism. In times of war, it is words, not nukes that can bring peace. For who will mourn us once we are all gone? Yes, that is the train of thought set off by my second 2/6 word: Mourn.
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 5, 2022 under the title ‘Dreams of Wordle’. The writer teaches political science at Panjab University, Chandigarh.
It yields good jealousies, like what I felt till I hit that first 2/6 score that everyone I knew had achieved. 
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