Wordle & Connections: The Last Neutral Border in a World at War with Itself

Wordle and Connections: How Two Little Puzzles Became the Last Neutral Territory in a Fractured World
By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, currently hiding from deadlines in a Reykjavik airport lounge

It began, as most global crises do, innocently enough. One morning in February 2022, while Russian tanks queued politely outside Kyiv and half of Twitter was busy deciding whether nuclear war was bullish or bearish for ESG funds, a few million otherwise sentient adults realized they had spent twenty-three perfectly good minutes trying to spell “CAULK.” The Wordle epidemic had crossed every border without a passport, spreading faster than both Omicron and rational political discourse. Six months later, the New York Times—never an outlet to leave a captive audience un-milked—dropped Connections, an even more fiendish grid that asks users to find four thematically linked words. The international response was swift and unanimous: “Wait, how is ‘Kiwi’ a currency, a bird, a fruit, and a New Zealander? Is this cultural appropriation or just lunch?”

From São Paulo co-working spaces to Singaporean hawker stalls, commuters now bow over identical yellow-green grids like monks examining illuminated manuscripts, only the manuscripts are back-lit and occasionally interrupted by ads for collagen supplements. The phenomenon is borderless in a way NATO can only fantasize about. Try taking a plastic straw across a frontier and you’ll be strip-searched; broadcast a Wordle result and you’re welcomed like a returning war hero. At this point the daily puzzle is less a game and more a planetary ritual, the closest thing we have to a secular muezzin calling the faithful to prayer: “Come, let us collectively pretend the day still has structure.”

Diplomats have noticed. During last year’s G-20 summit in New Delhi, staffers were observed passing phones under the table to compare grids instead of draft communiqués. One exhausted European trade attaché confessed—strictly off the record—that the only reliable common ground between Washington and Beijing was that everyone agreed ‘MOIST’ is a hideous word. In the same week, the WTO reported that global supply-chain delays had shortened by 3.7 minutes, the exact average time it takes to solve a Wordle. Correlation is not causation, but try telling that to the intern now drafting a white paper titled “Lexical Diversification as Soft Power.”

Of course, no empire stays benevolent forever. The Times’ paywall—erected like a medieval tariff—has already cleaved the world into haves and have-nots. Citizens of countries whose currencies collapse faster than a crypto exchange find themselves priced out of the puzzle page, forced to pirate grids like 1990s DVDs. Meanwhile, China’s domestic clone, “Wordle with Chinese Characteristics,” substitutes Xi Jinping Thought for any word longer than five letters and times you with a social-credit stopwatch. Russia’s version, reportedly, only offers one word per week. It is always “MOTHERLAND.”

Still, the resilience is remarkable. During Sudan’s internet shutdowns, Red Cross barges smuggled printed Wordles up the Nile like humanitarian sudoku. In Tehran, protest flash mobs synchronize by posting blank green squares—no spoilers, just solidarity. Even the Taliban, not known for recreational literacy, were rumored to have a daily Taliban-Connections: “Weapons, Re-education, Goat, Beard.” (Four for four.)

What does it all signify, beyond humanity’s touching willingness to procrastinate armageddon? Perhaps that in an age when every algorithm is optimized to outrage, a simple grid offering only the binary feedback of right or wrong feels like moral clarity. Or maybe we just like the illusion that some problems—unlike climate, debt, or our parents’ group chat—can be solved in six tries or fewer and come with a neat emoji summary.

Whatever the deeper meaning, the clock is ticking. The Times has already beta-tested a multiplayer version: imagine Wordle Battle Royale where only the last solver survives. When that launches, expect the first-ever coup d’état triggered by a triple-word score. Until then, comrades, enjoy the calm. Tomorrow’s puzzle drops at midnight GMT, the only midnight the entire planet still shares without arguing about time zones or historical grievances. Solve it while you can; the grid might be the last green thing we still have in common.