Games.

I have used the same “starter word” in Wordle since I started playing the game too long ago. My husband and I try to solve the Wordle puzzle every morning during our daily routine and we text the results to each other. It’s a fun little diversion.

There’s little chance this word will come up again but I’m going to continue to use it as my starter word because routine = structure to me, structure = stability for me, and most importantly, old habits die hard.

I have made a change with another game in my daily life and that’s deleting Solitaire from my iPad. For a couple of years I have played Solitaire on a daily basis, trying to solve four goals every day. That is, unless the one of the goals is “Complete a multiplayer game”, because I’ve never understood why Solitaire would be played in a multiplayer scenario but that’s something else to ponder at a later date.

While I was enjoying strategizing over my daily Solitaire sessions, it was becoming slightly obsessive for me. If I didn’t complete the goals of the day it would bother me and in this day and age I don’t need that added stress to my life. Also, I was noticing patterns in card distribution. Computers have no ability to be actually random, and that plays out when you’re playing games involving card decks and the like. They’re a bit more random than they were back in the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 days, but I could still see patterns in card distribution and that was a little bit frustrating to me as well, so I stepped away from Solitaire.

One other thing I’ve always been curious about is, what data are these companies deriving from my game play of Solitaire or Wordle? I mean, they must know a little bit about how my brain works as I work my way through these puzzles, but I don’t see anything that would think they could compel me to buying a certain brand of shaving cream or something.