Wordle fans celebrate 1,000th puzzle

As a speech pathologist, Jessica Valko is a fan of word games. But there’s one in particular that she’s been playing every day — Wordle.

The online word game that’s run by the New York Times is celebrating its 1,000th puzzle on Friday.

Valko, 51, of Murrysville said she loves playing the five-letter guessing game on her phone.

Though she jumped on the craze when the game was released in October 2021 by Josh Wardle, she, her mom and her sister were playing separately until they realized they were all interested.

Now, the trio competes and talks about the paths they took to get to guessing the daily word. Each day, they rotate who chooses the word that all three use as their first guess.

Wordle gives users six tries to guess the five-letter word.

“We are a little bit of a competitive family by nature, so everybody wants the bragging rights,” Valko said.

For the 1,000th Wordle, it will be Valko’s turn to choose.

Though sometimes they don’t guess the Wordle, the game gives them a chance to connect every day when they might not always be able to otherwise.

“We don’t always have a chance to talk about our daily lives, but every day we talk about our Wordle,” Valko said.

Valko’s mom, Linda Kardos, lives in Vandergrift. Valko’s sister, Dianna Zabinski, lives in Michigan.

“It means so much to me because we connect every single day,” Kardos said.

“And if I can beat them, as a mother, I love it,” she said with a laugh.

Wordle has given Christy Bash and her three sisters a chance to connect daily as well.

Bash, 70, of New Alexandria and her sisters also take turns coming up with the word they all use as their first guess. They’ve been playing together for over a year. Two live in Pennsylvania, and one lives in Oregon.

“It’s fun, and we have a lot of laughs over it,” she said. “It’s just something we can do together even though we don’t live close.”

Bash, a communications consultant at Elliott, and her sisters ask friendly competitive questions like: “Who got the highest score?” and “How did you get it that quick?”

“I think it’s a really quick way to do something that stimulates your brain,” she said.

And they’ve branched out from Wordle as well, playing the New York Times’ Connections game.

Gayle Rogers, professor and chair of the University of Pittsburgh’s English department, said he’s never missed a day playing the word game.

“I’m still playing — I think the phenomenon is still going,” he said. “I think it hit at the right time as a pandemic activity that you can share virtually.”

Rogers said he texts with friends, family and colleagues to discuss the puzzles almost daily.

“I do it first thing in the morning, and I find it a fun way to wake your brain up a little bit,” he said. “My brother and I always exchange scores and paths … and find ourselves doing very similar things a lot of the time — and it’s interesting to see.”

For Rogers, the most interesting words to guess are the easy ones, he said.

“We use them so commonly, so we don’t necessarily think of them as words very often,” Rogers said. “Those are the ones that … you kind of smack your forehead after that and say, ‘Oh, right.’ ”

Rogers plans to continue playing Wordle every day.

“It’s a small, fun part of the day.”