As millions of people around the world have discovered, cracking the daily Wordle in two or three moves feels terrific. But while it’s a lovely way to start (or finish) the day, Wordle wizards should check the smugness: being good at this game doesn’t necessarily mean you’re smart.
While there is likely some correlation between aptitude at Wordle and IQ, says Ted Nettelbeck, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Adelaide, “I would be surprised if it was particularly strong”.
How smart are you if you got it in three?
The game requires “some small aspect of word fluency”, he says, “but I’d be very surprised if it was a reliable marker for much else besides acquired word knowledge and interest in word games”.
To be sure, Wordle can be challenging. But the barrier to entry is far lower than some other puzzles, such as sudoku or cryptic crosswords – and that’s a big part of its appeal.
“A few minutes, a cup of tea, you can get that sense of success very quickly, that little hit of dopamine,” says Loren Mowszowski, deputy director of the healthy brain ageing program at the University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre.
Success demands both a decent vocabulary and a smattering of strategy. The former is an indicator of crystallised intelligence, the latter of fluid intelligence, to deploy a distinction first articulated by psychologist Raymond Cattell in 1963.
“Language puzzles would draw on one’s crystallised intelligence, but one’s fluid intelligence could reflect how well you can spot patterns,” says Daniel Little, associate professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne. “Different puzzles require different strategies. Fluid intelligence is correlated with how well you can find a strategy that works.”
But anyone looking for definitive proof that being good at Wordle is not an indicator of intelligence should probably stop reading now. According to Little, “retrieving words and checking if they fit the Wordle clues would involve working memory, which is the ability to keep information active, manipulate, and update information. And working memory is correlated with intelligence.”
Indeed, puzzle solving generally demands some degree of fluid intelligence, notes Mowszowski, “so it stands to reason that people who have greater fluid intelligence abilities may have greater overall intelligence, if we were to measure it”.
But, she adds, fluid intelligence is not the only measure of ability. “Knowledge, speed of thinking, concentration, memory, how we process visual information are important too. So it’s one component, but not everything.”
To solve a Wordle “requires several puzzle-solving skills”, says Philip Fine, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Buckingham in the UK, who has, with his colleague Kathryn Friedlander, been researching the link between intelligence and cryptic crossword expertise for the past decade. “A minimum level of vocabulary is a must, but it is also very much about pattern recognition and strategy.”
Unsurprisingly, in a 2016 survey of cryptic crossword experts, Fine and Friedlander found a high correlation between education and expertise. A little more surprising was that people with a background in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) made up more than half the 805 survey respondents, while those from a language-focused background constituted about one quarter.
“Cryptic crossword solving involves far more than just a good vocabulary, but an ability to ‘crack the code’ of the clue, ignoring the surface reading to get at the mechanism underneath,” they wrote in a paper published in 2020. “This doesn’t mean that anyone can’t learn to solve cryptic crosswords, but to be really top-flight, a high fluid intelligence is very helpful.”
In other words, if you got “moron” in two in Wordle, good for you; your combination of guesswork, vocabulary and strategic moves paid off. But if you got it in a cryptic where the clue was “idiot makes love in the morning (5)” then you have likely applied a different sort of intelligence – one that Fine and Friedlander believe is linked to excellence – to the task.
So, the next time some smug colleague or housemate comes over all Einstein-like just because they nailed that day’s Wordle, feel free to tell them to pull their head, with its averagely sized brain, in. As Loren Mowszowski says, “People who are good at Wordle can be chuffed about their language and problem-solving skills but I don’t think they can lay claim to being ‘smarter’, per se.”
Then again, it doesn’t mean they’re not either.
“It is possible that smarter people tend to engage in these puzzles,” says Ted Nettelbeck wryly. “Just because it makes sense to entertain oneself with things that one is good at.”
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