Copy Cat

“Can you help me Tía Amy?”

My nephew brought his knees up on the bench next to me, propping my mom’s iPad on them as he worked on the Spelling Bee.

“I’ve already gotten LACE and LICE,” he said proudly.

I peered at the letter options for the day: C-A-I-L-B-E-Y.

“Hmmm,” I said, the letters zooming around as they rearranged themselves in my mind. “Do you know how to spell CABLE?”

He shook his head.

“Try it. C-A-…”

He tapped B, then hesitantly the L and the E, looking up at me. I nodded.

“Yay!” He grinned.

I pulled open my own NYT Games app, bringing up the Wordle, which is the one I opt to start with every morning. Wordle, then the Mini, then Strands, and finally Connections once Patrick is ready.

I’m a random-first-word guesser, so I popped in: CABLE.

Okay, okay, would have preferred some other letters, but not bad!

“What’s that?” John Henry asked.

“The Wordle,” I told him.

“I wanna play Wordle!”

He opened up the game.

“Do you know how to play?”

“Yeah…” he said, unsure.

“So the yellow means that the letter is correct, but it’s in the wrong place. Green means right letter, right place. Gray means it’s not in the word at all. So see, our word has an E but it’s not at the end.”

“Got it,” he said, as he typed CABLE in and pressed enter. Doh!

“Wait!” I laughed. “Don’t guess the same word as me.”

He looked at me blankly.

“Now, what’s a 5-letter word with an E in it that doesn’t end with E or include any of the other letters?”

He brought his hand to his chin. Thinking pose.

“I want to type for you, Tía,” Emmie said.

I pulled her up to sit beside me.

I thought to myself. I always like to guess an S or a T early on. And maybe there’s another E somewhere. The Wordle likes to do that sometimes.

“Let’s try STEER. Ready? S… T… E… E… R.” I spelled slowly for her as she found the letters on the keyboard.

Darn it. I hate when you get through the second guess without any new letters. At least we know where the E is.

Before I could think, John Henry typed STEER in and clicked enter.

“Johnny!” I said. “You can guess something different than me and we can win faster. See how we each have 6 guesses? If we play together, we’ll actually have 12.”

(Yes, I am that competitive against myself and Wordle. And yes, I see how playing team-Wordle and team-Connections may be perceived as cheating, but I prefer to see them as two minds are better than one. Plus, I have a 228-day streak that I do not want to give up!)

“So now we need to think of a word with an E as the fourth letter, and none of these other letters we’ve guessed.”

“What letters now, Tía?” Emmie asked, impatiently. “Can I hold your phone.

“Hold on, I’m thinking. And no, I’m gonna keep holding my phone.”

“Why?”

My mom came over to help John Henry.

Maybe… MINED? MOLED? There’s likely an -ED at the end.

“Okay, Emmie, ready? M… O… W… E… D.”

Now we’re talking. But if there’s no -ED at the end, nor -ER, what could it be? The S is out of the question. Could it be… a Y? _ODEY? DO_EY? Aha!

“Emmie, type: D… O… P… E… Y. Yes!”

“We got it! We got it!” Emmie cheered.

“Got what?” John Henry looked over. My mom and him were still on guess three.

“The word is DOPEY,” I said proudly. And yes, this time he could copy it.