I’m an avid fan of Wordle. Even though I was late (literally), I’ve been playing it every day for over a year now. Through it, my mom and I chat more than ever — we literally text each other every morning, so it’s almost become as much a ritual as a daily game. And as I’m sure most of you know, with daily play comes the inevitable accumulation of streaks. The higher it gets, the more we sweat when we hit 5 or even 6 guesses.
Most will have lost one game or another, perhaps due to an annoying word with too many options, or simply because it’s something we’ve never heard of before. But, either way, both my mother and I (gritted teeth) will gracefully accept defeat and reinstatement, without peeping into today’s Wordle answer for us. But, to my horror, my impressive 180 streak recently reset to zero for no reason: I haven’t lost a game, I haven’t lost a day. Here’s what happened.
Why was my Wordle series reset?
I recently booked myself a well deserved break from the UK to Florida. And while I planned on being soaked in the sun and at theme parks, I obviously intended to continue playing Wordle every day with the best Wordle starter words. On the day of the flight, I played as usual before take off – no problem there – my streak had just reached 180, so I was looking forward to the 200 mark. However, when I woke up in my hotel the next morning, fresh and ready for my vacation, to my horror my streak was gone and reset to zero.
What had happened here? I hadn’t missed a day and hadn’t played between 7pm and midnight Florida time, which would have been after midnight in the UK. I was disappointed to say the least. I continued to play every day and built up another 14 day streak before I returned to the UK. Oddly enough it didn’t reset by flying back, just flying away, so the confusion increased.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
After returning, I did some research on the problem. It turns out that when it comes to long-distance travel, Wordle unfortunately has a tendency to reset at times, reducing any streak to zero. This is the case even if you keep playing every day and keep winning. Whether or not this is related to the difference in time zones is hard to say, especially since I still played every day with plenty of free time in both time zones. But, in any case, it’s something that any Wordle enthusiast who plans to travel should be aware of.
Can you recover your Wordle series?
To get my streak back, according to MUO (opens in new tab), I tried turning off the “Set Automatically” option in my date and time settings, then resetting the date on my phone to the day when the series disappeared. I then had to re-complete that day’s Wordle before returning to the current date. To my dismay this didn’t fix the problem, in fact, I only lost the 14 day streak I had built up in the meantime. Sadly it seems my streak is gone forever.
Preventing this from happening in the future isn’t exactly spelled out, but it should be possible because Wordle just fixed his biggest flaw. Logically, by creating a New York Times account, your series should be saved in such cases. Or, if you want to take extreme precautions, you could alternatively ask someone at home to complete the daily Wordles in the meantime using the same account. If your Wordle series means a lot to you, they might be worth exploring. Personally, I’ll continue to play Wordle, but this is definitely something the game should try to fix.
