You must have played Wordle. I have. Once. And only because, if you’re going to say how much you hate something, you must at least try it. 

Even though I write for a living and love words, I hate word games. Actually, it’s because I write for a living and love words that I hate word games. 

Words possess great power and a transcendent allure. They only exist, however, to convey an impression or articulate a point of view. They’re too important, too beautiful to have their magic and relevance removed so they can be reduced to meaningless pawns in a pointless puzzle.

So I also loathe Scrabble and can take or leave (mainly leave) any sort of crossword.  I come from the world of advertising so I do love wordplay but that’s very different from word games. Snappy, punny headlines are my industry’s stock in trade. I didn’t get to choose the one at the top of this page unfortunately. I would have chosen “Wordles fail me” or “Wordle Gummidge”. 

Ads have featured many great examples of wordplay “Mrs Beeton beaten”, for example, for Bird’s Eye, and the greatest of them all for a January sale at a camping shop “Now is the winter of our discount tents”.  

I love the fact that “Do geese see God?” and “Sit on a potato pan, Otis” are palindromes and even though this tale isn’t true, it’s worth telling.  The landlord of the Rose & Crown told his signwriter that he wanted more space between the words:  “Between Rose and and and and and Crown”, proving that it’s possible to contract a sentence containing five consecutive ands.

Wordle’s cruelly neutered words have no such intrigue or purpose. They may as well be a line of numbers or those silly coloured pegs in the Mastermind board game.  And where’s the skill? Does Wordle require a compendious vocabulary or a facility with words? Not when your first guess is just that: a wild guess. Then given how much depends on that first guess, your success is more a matter of luck than judgment.

It’s a game for solipsists who, if you’ll forgive the phrase, enjoy playing with themselves. Or rather playing against themselves. Wordle requires neither a love for language nor the need for other people. And since I love and need both these things, it’s not the game for me. It disrespects words and everything about them – their meanings, their etymology, even the way they feel when you say them and sound when you hear them.

And returning to “Wordle Gummidge”, a “gummidge” is a miserable, peevish person, as described by Dickens in David Copperfield.  The sort of person who sits alone playing Wordle, miserable because of the inaccuracy of that initial guess, then peevish if someone else posts a “good” score on Twitter.

So yes, “gummidge”. Go on, you can have that one to net you a few precious points at Scrabble. 

Because, as you’ve probably worked out, I won’t be needing it.