Help! I Am Addicted to the ‘Dailies’
By Features Editor Chloe Barrett
Everyone played Wordle, especially during the big Covid lockdown of 2020. If someone told me that they abstained and had never heard of this viral sensation, I would automatically assume that they were lying. That probably says more about me than them, (why would you lie about a silly little online game?) but still, I would have a hard time believing.
For those who live their peaceful existences in a Wordle-free zone, it is a daily game that requires you, and everyone else around the world, to guess a random five-letter word. To do this, you are required to input another five-letter word and watch as the tiles light up, indicating if you have any correct letters and if they happen to be in the right place. For example, if the word I use to start with is ‘Audio’ and the mystery word is ‘Apple’, I know that my A is in the right place, but the rest of my letters are absent. You get six overall guesses before it is unfortunately game over. Then, you crawl back into your little cave of shame, at least I do, and guard your failed score with your life, embarrassed if a friend happened to find out.
‘Have you done the Wordle yet?’ they ask.
‘Oh no, I completely forgot! I’ll do it later…’ I reply, well aware that ‘later’ will never come, and I will conveniently forget to share my score, which was, I am ashamed to admit, zero.
For many in the universe, Wordle fell away from me as things returned to normal. When I lost my daily streak, that was it for me. I shunned the game, turning my back on it for at least a year. A silly little game was not getting the best of me! At least that is what I thought, back when I was undoubtedly naive. Now, the ‘dailies’, as many have taken to calling the genre, are back with a vengeance. Dailies are, simply enough, games that update every day and your job is to solve them. I would like to introduce you, dear reader, to my favorites, excluding the previously mentioned Wordle, of course.
Connections is a game made by the New York Times, who just so happen to have championed the field of dailies. They bought Wordle, and are the most popular version of my next favorite game. But first, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. Connections offers you four lines of words, each containing four words in a random order. The goal of the game is to wind up with four categories that are made out of these somewhat unrelated words. To use the example from the website, Bass, Flounder, Salmon, and Trout are all types of fish. That would be the easier category, with the most difficult potentially leaving you with words like the following: Ant, Drill, Island and Opal. You can put ‘Fire’ in front of all of those words. Usually, I leave these until last, when they automatically are solved due to my doing the other three beforehand. The catch is that you have four overall attempts, and if you match the wrong words a few too many times, it is unfortunately the end, at least until tomorrow.
The Mini Crossword is pretty self-explanatory. It is a crossword. That is mini. If you have a few minutes to kill, it is the perfect way to sharpen your brain. At least that is what they say about these brain puzzles, but nothing can compete with Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! for the Nintendo DS, at least in my opinion anyway. (Why on earth was I playing that game as a six-year-old child?)
My final and newest addition to my daily routine is none other than Time Guessr. This wacky game will cycle through five random images that it has gathered from somewhere on the internet, and your job is to guess what year you think it was taken in, and where in the world. Some are easier than others, as they might reveal within the picture a famous landmark or language, whereas some are practically impossible, at least for me.
Quite frankly, my brain does not feel that much smarter while playing these wacky daily games. Sometimes they cause nothing more than frustration, and I strictly vow to never participate in them again. At least until the next day.
