Originally posted by Reddit user mrbenten, the player recounts the experience of trying to teach their father, whose first language is not English, how to play through a game of Wordle. The entire story is hilarious but caps off perfectly with a misunderstanding of the spelling of a possible guess thanks to the language barrier between the father and the English-specific game.
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In the post, the fan recounts the struggle of trying to get their father to simply think of a single five-letter word to use as their first guess and start getting some clues for progressing further. It takes some time, but eventually, they get through a few guesses that eventually lead to a final guess of “patch” with the last four letters colored green. However, even though the father was this close to answering the day’s Wordle, he stumbled over the final word thanks to their own history with English as a second language.
When looking for a word like “hatch” or “catch” that might fit the five-letter description ending in “-atch”, the father tries to guess the word “tatch” at the end. The original poster then tries to explain that “tatch” isn’t a word and has to ask their father what he thinks the word means in order to correct the misunderstanding. To cap off the story with the perfect Wordle answer, the poster’s father then tries to use it in a sentence like “to tatch the wall,” which the fan then responds to by correcting that the word he’s looking for is “touch.”
It’s a wholesome story of a player struggling to introduce Wordle to their parent, combined with a familiar feeling for anyone with family members with an alternate first language. The twist of the language barrier at the end of the story is also the perfect punchline for struggling with teaching the game to anyone, family member or otherwise. Maybe the poster will get the chance to have a similar experience as well if they turn to any of the Wordle clones that have begun popping up online.
Wordle is available now for PC and Mobile devices.
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