Playing Online Games

For months, neighbor Shawn, niece Chrissie and I have played two New York Times games together. We compare Wordle and Connections by sharing our results with each other. We can’t see the letters we used, only colored tiles. I think we are quite evenly matched. Almost every day one of us could fail a game, although sometimes we all do well. It’s a fun thing, not cut-throat competition. I have miserable results in Connections whenever a group involves sports, movies, or TV. The others do much better than I do in those areas. If I have a strong point, I don’t know what it is.

Often we are disappointed in ourselves because we missed something we should have known. I decided to cut little pieces of paper and write the 16 words of Connections on them. Surely it would help to push the words around while hunting for a common theme for each set of four. If I found a set I was sure of, I’d push those four words to one side. I did that and immediately found one set. Taking those words out of play made it much easier to spot the connections of the other sets. In seconds I finished the game with perfect results. I was shocked. I shared my results with the others and explained what I had done. I decided it was cheating. I’m sure I wouldn’t have done as well if I had shifted things around in my head. Was it the writing of each word? Was it being able to instantly group things because they were not connected as they were on the screen? I have no idea, but I know I was going at warp speed. That felt REALLY GOOD!