WordleBot is a smug, pompous, conceited botsplainer

Musings, Rant,

Sure, after I finish playing Wordle I do not have to check WordleBot’s egotistical analysis of my daily attempts but I do anyway. Call it hopeful (maybe WordleBot will praise me) or maybe self-destructive (WordleBot often shames me for not using the same guesses as it does), but I check in with WordleBot about 95% of the time. The only times I don’t check is when I’ve made a very stupid guess.

The NYT WordleBot introduction page has this to say about WordleBot:

“WordleBot is a tool that will take your completed Wordle and analyze it for you. It will give you overall scores for luck and skill on a scale from 0 to 99 and tell you at each turn what, if anything, you could have done differently — if solving Wordles in as few steps as possible is your goal.”

Josh Katz and Matthew Conlen, New York Times

The thing is, WordleBot never loses. But WordleBot doesn’t play the hard version either. It’s always using words that do not have the letters previously uncovered. I always play the hard version.

Another gripe I have with WordleBot is that it’s happy to give me positive reinforcement if I do worse than it, but if I get the correct word in fewer tries than WordleBot it tells me I was very lucky. Not “Congratulations, you beat me!” but more like “Eh, lucky guess.”

Today, for instance, I guessed the correct word in two tries. WordleBot guessed it in three. Here’s what WordleBot had to say:

“You got it! But, with 10 solutions still to choose from, this was a very lucky guess.”

WordleBot July 19, 2022

I am not alone in my criticism of WordleBot. Back in April (before I knew about WordleBot), Christopher Livingston over at PC Gamer wrote an amusing article with an equally amusing title, The official Wordle companion bot is here to tell you how bad you are at Wordle. Also in April, Mashable’s Cecily Moran wrote NYT’s new ‘WordleBot’ will passive-aggressively insult your strategy. Finally, Alice O’Connor, associate editor at Rock Paper Scissors wrote an article about WordleBot called Wordle’s official WordleBot analysis make me feel even more foolish.

Where at Least Someone Knows My Name

Musings

I grew up in a smallish town where one often ran into people they knew when they were out and about. My parents went to specific bars where they were known by name — the Moose, the Dutch Inn, the sports bar whose name I have forgotten.

Moving from Elgin to Pittsburgh, I became an unknown. There was nowhere except my places of employment where I was known. Moving to Alexandria, the same — there was not one place other than work where anyone knew my name.

I wanted a “Cheers Bar” place where I was known. I wanted to be a regular somewhere. I was tired of being a stranger in places I frequented.

About fifteen years ago I finally got my wish. The owner of a restaurant we liked greeted me by name after visiting only a couple of times. Just because of that we’ve continued to go there — for dinner, for lunch, for bottles of wine or six-packs of beer.

A month or so ago I was surprised when the local fishmonger didn’t have to ask my name when I stopped by to pick up my fish order. I laughed and said I felt like I was walking into the Cheers Bar. He may be to young to understand, but hey… he knew my name.

Finally, just yesterday when I was shopping at a local boutique for a mother of the groom dress* for Andrew’s wedding, one of the sales people remembered my first name after hearing my last name. So that kind of counts, right?

I think I am sort of close to being known in another store, but I need to go more often.

*The dress I bought

Quatro Amigas

Things

I remember when I desperately wanted a TV in the bedroom. People on TV shows had them, some people I knew had televisions in their bedrooms, but it wasn’t until I was pregnant with Andrew and on bed rest that we put a TV in the bedroom. It was a tiny TV — maybe 13 inches, maybe a little bigger. It sat on a dresser on the wall opposite the bed. I probably had to squint to see anything — but at least it kept me entertained while incubating the baby to full term.

After that, we didn’t have a TV in the bedroom again for a few more years. I don’t even remember the first one, but it was probably moved to the bedroom after upgrading to a larger set in the family room. Since then we’ve always had one at the end of the bed. In recent years we’ve rarely used the bedroom TV. We always watched TV in the family room and had our phones or tablets for bedtime entertainment. I’ve made noises about getting rid of the bedroom TV, but Dean is not ready. We don’t get cable upstairs anymore — but we do have dongles that bring us whatever we want to watch except broadcast TV on the bedroom TV.

Today as I was tidying my attic study I came across a woven piece of art that our friends Sandy and Arieh gave us once after returning from a visit to Arieh’s home in Santiago, Chile. We kept meaning to hang it up, but never got around to it. We draped it over the back of a futon for a while, but various cat claws pulled out some fibers and thread. I’ve moved this piece of art from one storage area to another for the past decade or two and while I like it, I was tired of moving it.

Back to the TV — having a huge black void staring at you when you fall asleep and wake up can be depressing, especially since we barely use it. As I walked past it carrying the textile art I had an idea. Not an original idea since our friend Tal did this 35 years ago when he first got a Mackintosh computer. He didn’t like the black screen, so covered it with a colorful batik cloth when he was not using it. I hung the textile artwork over the TV — it fit perfectly. There are even little hooks behind the TV on the top to keep it in place.

I keep smiling when I look at the TV now — something I have not done for as long as I can remember. And now I can really see the artwork, it’s really nice!