From the Wellerman to Wordle, the lessons on how to solve Covid are ringing out loudly
What's a five-letter word for strength in unity?
Little yellow, green, and grey boxes started appearing in people’s timelines just a few weeks ago. I was puzzled and waited until a link was posted.
Today, I’m on a 10-day streak of wins, and I know that Wordle is 2022’s suggestion for how to solve our problems.
In 2020, while people spent weeks and months alone, often seeing loved ones die through the NHS equivalent to Zoom, ministers were partying and gathering in front of buffets with sausage rolls and party food.
One rule (and fines and imprisonment) for us, and another rule for them; suitcases full of booze included.
How do we make sense of a reality that has so many of us not only feeling outraged and heartbroken, but quite sensibly feeling weakened as a society?
Let’s look to the biggest collective choices that we made over the last two years. One was the sea shanty craze; the other is a solitary but collective and shared game, where we need to find five-letter words.
Wordle has similar feedback mechanisms to Mastermind — the colourful game —and it has recently gone viral. NPR reported two days ago that there were 2.7m users.
The very design of the game helps players reach the answer. Most people win; that’s the beauty of it, and that’s where we can find our solution to our collective action problems.
A quick summary of how it works:
There is one 5-letter word a day that all players need to guess and deduce — i.e., there is one bounded and well-defined problem a day and all the tools we need to solve it are available
Each time a player submits an answer, the constructive and helpful feedback they receive increases their chances of finding a logical solution to the problem.
Maybe you can see from just the two points above why I think Wordle provides a great lesson for society. As opposed to Mastermind’s colour pattern, words have meaning and so the solution is not a random selection of letters; there are specific and meaningful answers to each day’s puzzle. This narrows down the solutions quite substantially. We guess once but we logically learn from our guesses at each additional turn.
Another way of explaining its beneficial methods is by looking at it through Dr Strangelove’s eyes; i.e., game theory, which is a way of understanding social cooperation.
The most famous game is that of the prisoners dilemma. In this carceral game, there is a lack of trust and a lack of communication The prisoners can’t talk to each other and the guards keep persuading them to blame the other. The first person to blame the other, wins. If both talk, they win less than if both had kept their mouths shut. But the greatest win is through betraying the other’s trust as long as the other person keeps their mouth shut.
That’s what lockdown was. We kept our word; we stayed home, alone; we died, alone; we saw our loved ones suffer, alone.
They partied and had fun and benefited with millions of public funds at our expense. We trusted them and they betrayed us.
The prisoner’s dilemma is not the solution to our problems.
There is another game, however, that we can use. It’s a less known one but more useful and beneficial to all of society. It’s that of the stag hunt or, as I learned it, assurance.
One example is of two people who have to row a boat. If both choose to row, they can successfully move the boat. However, if one doesn't, the other wastes their effort. Through cooperation, they can solve a problem that affects both of them.
Without cooperation, they both lose.
This is a game that should also be instantly recognisable as the distribution of vaccines around the world. Without vaccines, and proper measures, the virus spreads and mutates and, quite possibly, becomes even worse so more people die.
How do people come together in a world that is socially distanced though? How do we find glimpses of cooperation?
What if I told you that sea shanties are a game of assurance and so is Wordle?
Sea shanties need more than one person. To that aid, came social media, which provided a wonderful solution in TikTok. One person could add to another, and another could add to another and on and on.
As I revisited the lyrics to Wellerman, I was struck by something obvious but to which I was completely oblivious last year; we were waiting for someone to save us. We did that because we couldn’t act. Together, we waited for the Wellerman who we all knew would be over at some point and then we could take our leave (from our homes) and go.
When disaster struck, we waited. We thought that those who we were relying on were not men ‘of greed’ for they ‘belonged to the Whaleman’s creed’. They were people who fought to fix the situation and help the rest of us because we were in it together.
When people sang The Wellerman in their hundreds and thousands over zoom and TikTok, they were singing of hope that those who we were relying on would fight fairly and solve our problems because we were in it together. So we waited, patiently, for over a year.
As we discovered in 2021, however, the people in charge were not our solution. We waited and the Wellerman never came. He was busy boozing it up at Number 10 with the sugar, and tea and rum, while helping his mates profit through illegal VIP lanes.
Well, 2022 came and the waiting is done.
We trusted them, and they betrayed us, and worse than that, we are no closer to solving our problems. The world doesn’t have vaccines disbursed equally, our children are being hospitalised at ever-increasing rates, and over 200 people are dying a day while others partied.
The sea shanties told us to trust the right people. That strategy failed.
What is our next strategy, and why is it Wordle?
Well, when we collectively raise up something to such an extent that it can’t help but draw our attention by the millions, then there’s a message there and we need to pay attention.
The biggest lesson from Wordle is that when the rules are set up well and they are designed to benefit everyone, we can all win.
Most importantly, we can all win even when playing alone.
We looked to our leaders and they failed us.
If we use the right methods, we will all win.
Those methods are found in games of cooperation, communication, and work to benefit the collective, rather than individuals alone. This is the only thing that will help each and every one of us succeed.
Profiting at others’ expense builds animosity and destroys trust; without trust, communities cannot survive. It’s the glue that keeps us together. It’s the only way to solve our problems.
Trust and cooperation are stronger than hope, and much stronger and more beneficial than hate.
In Wordle, you can’t share your answer but what you can share is your experience. We reach out to each other in humanity and build empathy. You can honestly say, ‘I know what you have experienced. I know what you have suffered.’
It’s about knowing that we are that other person; sometimes we’re the one with the lucky guess that gets it right on the first turn, and other times we don’t even guess right after six attempts. But we all know that we tried against the very same obstacles. We face the same problem.
We did it alone but we were together.
Last year, we waited for the Wellerman so we could take our leave and go.
This year, we are looking for a five-letter word for strength in unity.
Does anyone else think that might lead us to POWER?
Brilliant analysis! I love it (even though I hadn't heard of the Wellerman project).