Like millions of people, I play Wordle each day in The New York Times. If you are unfamiliar, Wordle is a logic game in which you get six guesses to figure out a five-letter word. After you submit a guess, you get feedback about each letter in the word you chose. Either the letter is not in the correct word at all, the letter is in the correct word but in a different position, or the letter matches the correct answer. After you get the correct answer, you can have the “WordleBot” analyze how well you played in terms of luck and skill. I always do that, even though it often annoys me. The key to Wordle is to guess words that reduce the number of possible correct answers. When I carefully plan out a guess that will take me from, say, 48 possible answers down to 1, WordleBot always chalks up the guess to luck and not skill. Luck had nothing to do with it! In psychological terms, WordleBot is making an external or situational attribution about me, assuming my answer was due to luck, a transient factor outside my control. I want WordleBot to make an internal or dispositional attribution, saying my answer was due to stable, internal factors—specifically, my hard work and skill.
Menu
