When Wordle came along I was confused. I started hearing about this word puzzle trend that was made all the more addictive by only letting you play once per day so that you wouldn’t get addicted, thus making you get even more obsessed.

Hadn’t I heard of and played this suddenly trending game years before? The one with a circle of letters that you had to make as many words from as quickly as possible?

Boy, did I have much to learn. No, that was not only something else entirely, Wordle wasn’t an app. It was online only.

So I tried it.

Now I wouldn’t say I was hooked but I did end up playing it maybe four or five days out of seven when I thought about it. I thought I was fairly good at it. I seem to get most answers in four steps, occasionally three. (If you haven’t played, six is the maximum.)

Turns out we in New Jersey must not be that good.

Research was just done by wordtips.com and it turns out there are 30 states in the U.S. that are better at it than we are. Wow. Alabama is even better than us? Our average score is 3.97. Theirs is 3.81. Delaware is better with an average 3.70.

A dark day for the Dirty Jerz indeed.

And North Dakota rules the roost at 3.65. How can this be? We have to up our game New Jersey! Maybe we just need more practice?

Kylie Moore and I are doing our part. First I created Wordles (yes it got so popular there are sites that let you make your own) where the answers are always something about New Jersey.

Then Kylie did a fun article on Jersey-inspired starter words. Starter words are very important. They can let you zero in on or eliminate key vowels and it was Kylie who taught me “adieu” is a great starter word since it covers three vowels right off the bat. Nice thing on her Jersey starter words is you can use these in trying to solve the real NY Times Wordle if you want.

Still, at Wordle we’re in the bottom part of the heap? That S _ C _ S!

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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