Pokimane Has Wordle Fail

Wordle, a daily word game, has gripped the internet, and it frequently results in uncomfortable moments on Twitch when streamers like Pokimane wonder if what they’ve written is a valid word.

Here’s a quick rundown of Wordle if you’re not familiar with it. By visiting nytimes.com/games/wordle, everyone has a chance to play once every 24 hours. You have six chances to guess the word of the day before having to wait for the next one. To demonstrate their dominance in the word game, players want to share their streaks and amount of guesses. The game has grown in popularity to the point where streamers have begun to play with their viewers. Streamers put their English literacy to the test, with occasionally embarrassing results, in what appears to be a fun notion at first.

Pokimane has made it a tradition to begin each Twitch stream using Wordle. You might think it’s easy to play the game in front of thousands of people, but she’s set her chat to emote-only mode, rendering her viewers nearly useless. 

She had gotten down to her fifth guess while playing, with four of the letters exposed. She wrote the word “other” after some difficulty, but hesitated to press enter. She stated, “I don’t know if this is a word, bro. I’m gonna be honest, is this a word?” 

As viewers frantically pushed the clip button, her chat erupted in hilarious emotes. On Reddit, there were clips titled “To think Poki was supposed to be a chemical engineer” and “Poki shows off her English skills.” 

Because of this, Pokimane exclaimed; “Why are you laughing? What’s so funny?”

Shortly after, she realized that “other” was a word and explained she had read the word as if it were a misspelling of “author.” The streamer, embarrassed, pretended to turn off her show before switching to the PG-13 version of Wordle, Lewdle. For those who are curious, the correct answer was “other,” and she won on her fifth guess.