The Saturday edition of Timeless & Timely, just for word nerds. If you discovered this and youâre not yet a subscriber, gently press the button below.
ââWhat one man can invent, another can discover,â said Holmes.â â Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, âThe Adventure of the Dancing Men,â 1903
You thought you could escape it, didnât you?
The one place where you thought you were safe from the onslaught of the last couple of weeks.
Well, my friend, you will find no quarter here. I feel as if itâs my obligationâmy sacred duty as a wordsmithâto bring it up.
Iâm talking about Wordle.
Wait! Where are you going? I promise I wonât share squares of yellow and green, nor an awkward fraction with 6 as a denominator.
Instead, as âOff the Clockâ promises, Iâve got something fun in store.
Two somethings, as a matter of fact.
First, the Wordle rip-offs.
âI, therefore, waited for fresh materialâ
âI think I may have known how to frame the letter,â â âThe Dancing Menâ
You know what they say about imitation. Well, Wordle has arrived at that level.
In case youâre one of the three people who hasnât heard of Wordle, itâs a simple word game invented by an engineer as a gift to his girlfriend (New York Times article with paywall lifted). It launched in the fall and has taken off over the last couple of weeks.
Players get six tries to guess a five-letter word. Letter tiles that are in the correct place are colored green; letter tiles in the word but not properly placed are yellow; incorrect guesses are black.
And at the end, you have the option to share your results with the world. Which everyone thinks is mandatory, evidently.
On a serious note, whether you share your results or not, playing Wordle is a fun exercise for the brain, as it allows you to be creative with your vocabulary, intuitively determine which words have been eliminated, and doesnât operate on a timeframe (other than resetting every night at midnight).
Anyway, there have been a handful of fun imitations that have sprouted up in the wake of Wordleâs popularity.
Sweardle
For you dirty-minded types, Sweardle is a four-letter version of the game. Personally, I had a hard time coming up with too many four-letter words (well, four-letter words of that type).
Absurdle
The name says it all. Absurdle gives you one tryâa single rowâto land the five-letter word. Good luck.
Letterle
I have to admit, Letterle is my favorite. Mostly because itâs so simple. You have 26 tries to guess one letter. Itâs a welcome relief from the brain-twister aspect of the others.
âWell, Mr. Holmes, what do you make of these?â
âI looked with amazement at the absurd hieroglyphics upon the paper.â â âThe Dancing Menâ
When it comes to word games, though, I always turn back to Sherlock Holmes.
Specifically to âThe Adventure of the Dancing Men,â written in 1903. Conan Doyle ranked it as third on his list of favorite Sherlock Holmes stories.
In the story, a client brings a set of stick figure drawings to the detectiveâdrawings that have been left on his property.
Holmes realizes that these are coded messages and that each stick figure represents a letter. Flags denote the final letter in a word. And in fairly quick order, ferrets out the first letter:
âAs you are aware, E is the most common letter in the English alphabet, and it predominates to so marked an extent that even in a short sentence one would expect to find it most often. Out of fifteen symbols in the first message four were the same, so it was reasonable to set this down as E.â
The wordplay continues, with a little more brain-work involved:
âBut now came the real difficulty of the inquiry. The order of the English letters after E is by no means well marked, and any preponderance which may be shown in an average of a printed sheet may be reversed in a single short sentence. Speaking roughly, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D, and L are the numerical order in which letters occur; but T, A, O, and I are very nearly abreast of each other, and it would be an endless task to try each combination until a meaning was arrived at. I, therefore, waited for fresh material.â
Eventually, Holmes was able to decipher the messages and catch the criminal. But not before tragedy struck. The story is in the public domain, so feel free to look it up.
A Final Word
âOnly one word of epilogue.â â âThe Dancing Menâ
I would be remiss if I didnât mention my friend and colleague Glen Miranker. He, like me, is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, the literary society dedicated to Sherlock Holmes.
Glen is the foremost collector of Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle material in the world, with over 8,000 items in his collection; 221 of those items are currently on display at an exhibition at The Grolier Club: Sherlock Holmes in 221 Objects. It is breathtaking.
If you canât make it to New York, there is a beautiful catalog that chronicles the exhibition: Sherlock Holmes in 221 Objects: From the Collection of Glen S. Miranker by Cathy & Glen Miranker.
Iâve seen his collection in person at his home; it includes a number of original illustrations, such as the one I used in the newsletter on January 7:
And beyond the visual, Glenâs collection includes four original manuscripts â including the manuscript of âThe Dancing Men.â To see Conan Doyleâs neat handwriting in person, and to hold the very notebook in which he scrawled those stick figures, is an other-worldly experience for a bibliophile.
Before retiring, Glen was Chief Technology Officer for Apple, having served in the hardware division. His interest in Sherlock Holmes and his professional pursuits seemed to collide for maximum effect: he also collects and lectures on the history of cryptography and is a director of the National Cryptologic Foundation.
Glen is the embodiment of someone who understands word games.
Thanks, and Iâll see you on the internet.
Thoroughly enjoyed this edition. Timeless & Timely is always entertaining and educational. Thank you,Scott.