Best of 2022
Play FRUGLE! The New Word Game That Will Never Go Up Behind A Paywall
“[t]he New York Times hinted the popular online word puzzle may go behind a paywall in the future.” -Daily Mail
Instructions:
- Call a friend and ask them to think of a five letter word but not tell you what it is. Guess the word.
- Friend tells you which letters are yellow (correct but in the wrong place) and which letters are green (correct and in the right place).
- Try to visualize this. Clarify what your friend just said three to four times because it’s actually harder to keep this in your mind than you realize.
- Guess another word.
- (Repeat steps 2-3)
- Friend tells you to “just go get a pen and paper and write it down for God’s sake!”
- Scramble to find pen and paper. End up writing on the back of an envelope with a broken crayon.
- Ask friend to repeat again which letters were green and which were yellow. Friend repeats.
- Miss what they say because you are distracted by the thought that perhaps you should try to find green and yellow crayons to color your notes.
- (Repeat step 8)
- Sense that friend is starting to lose patience.
- Tell friend you just need a minute to think this through.
- Take 12 minutes.
- Friend asks “what the hell is going on over there” and if you are still even on the line? Friend says if you don’t answer soon, they are hanging up.
- Remind friend that there is no time limit to FRUGLE.
- Friend shouts back: “Well I don’t have all day, ya know! I need to walk the dog, get my kids ready for school, and get to work. Not all of us have endless time for word puzzles, and— ”
- Interrupt friend and say you understand but you just need a few more minutes, it’s on the tip of your tongue.
- Guess another word. Then immediately realize it doesn’t fit with the colors your friend told you but you were feeling distracted and like a bad friend and under pressure to spit something out. Get dejected and feel incredibly stupid. Say: “Oh my god I must have early onset dementia or something.”
- Friend is now not only frustrated at how long this is taking, but also feels like they must reassure you that your brain is still healthy. This makes friend even more annoyed.
- Spend the next twenty minutes tearfully processing your relationship together and finally come to the agreement that FRUGLE is ruining your friendship.
- After you make up and the air is cleared and you both feel a lot better, wait a beat and then ask if you can still have your remaining three word guesses.
- Friend snaps back, “What the fuck? Didn’t we just agree this was ruining things between us?!”
- Say that it’s cool, and that you totally get it and will stop bothering them.
- Friend, in an effort to be helpful, suggests, “maybe you should just pay for a New York Times puzzle subscription.”
- Take huge offense at this. Shout, “that’s it, we are through!”
- Hang up in anger. Wait 24 hours.
- (Repeat steps 1-27 with a different friend)
- After 10 days, look around and realize you have no more friends.
- Smugly congratulate yourself on your 10-day streak of losing friends.
- Think to yourself, “Well, at least I have never paid for a word game.”
- About the Author
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Elizabeth Simone is a comedy writer and cartoonist based in the Bay Area. Her work has appeared in The Belladonna, Slackjaw, Points In Case and now The Weekly Humorist. Her writing has been described as “Hilarious! Not to be missed!” by her mom.
