I felt a weird kind of mourning the other day. The quiet kind, where nothing dramatic happens, but you notice something’s missing. And, statistically speaking, you’ve probably felt it too, about a five-letter word game that used to start your day.

Back in February 2022, like half the planet, I started a Wordle WhatsApp group chat with 10 friends. Every morning, we’d post our green and yellow grids, brag about the lucky twos and console anyone stuck on five. It became our daily roll call, the first ping I saw every morning, a tiny glimpse into each other’s lives.

Wordle rapidly took over the world.

As a writer, I loved that it was about words, not whatever the algorithm wanted me to care about that day. People were arguing about etymology over breakfast. We shared our starter words like gossip (I was loyal to SPEAR, part strategy, part superstition; break it and I spiralled). For a brief, beautiful moment, the world had rediscovered the joy of language over likes.

But over time, the pings slowed. One person “took a break”. Another ghosted the grid. Someone else switched to Connections. Now, most days, it’s just me talking to myself in a chat called “Wordle”. And last week, for the first time ever, even I didn’t post.

I opened........

© The Age