How Do YOU Wordle?

It seems like literally every single person I know is doing the daily Wordle. 

If not, here's a short explanation that one of my friends used this morning that made me giggle:

"It's like a crossword puzzle with only one word and no hints."

I mean it's a pretty dang accurate description but doesn't really explain how to play. 

Everyime I try to type up to explain the directions ends up sounding manic and crazy, but I'll give it a try. 

There is a grid with 5 boxes across the top and 6 boxes down. Each row is one guess, so you have 6 guesses. So, then you do this:

1. Make a guess in the first row. 
2. Wonder what all the weirdly colored boxes are. 
3. Realize: green means the letter is in the correct place, yellow means the letter's there, but it's in the wrong place... the other squares are just plain wrong. 
4. Keep guessin' til you get all green
5. Post it on social media. 

I skip step 5 though. Instead, I share my results in the chat room I've hung out in every single day (all day) for the last 20 years. See, my best friend (not Best Friend... that is someone different) also hangs out there and plays Wordle every day. 

We share our results like two old folks meeting in the park every morning for coffee and parcheesi. It delights me and I will not change my ways to post mine on social media. It feels like it diminishes the charm of my morning ritual. 

Ok, but what I wanna know is... how do you play? Like, what mental gymnastics happen in your head when you try to figure it out?

Cause I think my aphantasia makes me approach it different than people who can visualize. 

My ideal way to solve the daily Wordle would be with pen and paper, but that almost feels like cheating so I don't use them. 

Heck, I don't even have a regular starting first word. I just pop in whatever word, uh, pops into my head first thing this morning. I mean, yeah, I'll question myself:

"Are there enough vowels in this word to make it worth starting with?"

"Does this uphold the Wheel standards?"

But once that first word is locked in... if I get any boxes that light up green, I keep those letters there the whole time; I just try to make words that land where they land. 

If I get stumped doing that, then I'll try a word that doesn't use ANY of the letters, cause, you know, I wanna maximize my guess. 

If I could visualize, I could 'see' myself just flipping through letters in all the different blank spaces and it would be so much easier.

Is that what folks who CAN visualize do it? 

I find myself just randomly saying words aloud that feel right until I stumble on one I want to guess with. Like, I say them out loud. 

This weirdly works really well for me, because sometimes our stuffed animals have rap battles and I need to be able to rhyme at a moments notice, so I have a lot of practice cycling through words in my head so that I'm ready with a bangin' bar when it's my turn. 

But that's a story for a different time.