Dry-erase marker in hand, Catherine Chirco, engineering teacher, walks up to the front of her room and creates a word game on the board for her students to play. She called it “Lingo.” Today we know this game as “Wordle.”
Chirco first learned of this game when she was a kid as she was watching The Game Show Network. Lingo is an American television game show where contestants compete to decode five-letter words given the first letter.
“I watched the show occasionally on the Game Show Network and I figured out a way to do a similar version of it on the board in my classroom. So when there were just a few minutes left at the end of class, I would play it with my students.” Chirco said. “I would circle the letter if it was in the word but not in the correct spot, and then put a box around it if it was in the word and in the correct spot,”
“They are so quick and easy that it makes them so engaging but also doesn’t take too much of your day.”
— Jayla Freeman
She replaced her whiteboard Lingo game with Wordle when it started to become popular in 2021.
“I still have a couple of friends of mine that each morning we play Wordle and send each other our scores,” Chirco said.
For Jayla Freeman, senior, her favorite word games are the New York Times Mini Crossword and Connections.
“I started playing junior year because I saw my friends playing them and thought it looked fun, and it became kind of habitual,” Freeman said.
Freeman plays the connections and mini crossword every day.
“I would recommend these games to anyone who enjoys word games or puzzles. They are so quick and easy that it makes them so engaging but also doesn’t take up too much of your day,” Freeman said. “I’ve gotten so good that I once did the mini in 10 seconds.”
The Baking & Pastry classes have joined the trend of participating in the daily New York Times’ games.
Seniors Gavin Lingenfelter and Ryan Mitchell began the gameplay when they asked Josie Muenks, FACS teacher, if they could play the games to fill extra class time on A-Days.
“We found a school-appropriate way to get our minds going for the next hour,” Mitchell said.
The class mainly prefers to play the mini crossword over Wordle or Connections. Mitchell said they found Wordle to be easy because the whole class is focused on guessing one word, while the crossword incorporates diverse categories that take more group brainstorming to solve.
Mitchell said it has brought the class together through collaborating and talking to people students usually wouldn’t interact with.
Connection answers: 1. MHS Principal: Davis, Devine, Regina, Sturges. 2. MHS teachers with last names that are words: Brown, Burger, Cook, King. 3. Spring Sports: Boys Tennis, Boys Volleyball, Girls Soccer, Track. 4. Fall Sports: Boys Soccer, Football, Girls Tennis, Softball.
