We have officially reached the last Saturday of February, and with it the winter has begun to recede—though a great deal of snow up here in the mountains has yet to melt. And after the snow comes the mud. Still, it’s hiking weather and I actually went on one Friday much to my dogs’ delight. Health issues have kept me a little less active than I’d like, though I’m working hard to turn that around.
The older you get, the more broken you feel and the more broken you see other people become—emotionally but also physically. Cancer here, stomach issues there, broken bones, strained backs, bizarre and mysterious maladies. Medical bills piling up. There’s nothing to be done about it! It’s the natural order. Though I suppose we could probably devise better systems to help one another. The drip-feed of death will never stop, but we could ease pain and suffering more effectively perhaps. We distract ourselves as best we can with books and movies and games and family and friends and gods and music and food—and half the things we like to distract ourselves with help nudge us ever closer to the grave.
I’m being dour. I apologize. Instead of meditating on our mechanical failures, let’s Wordle!
How To Solve Today’s Wordle
The Hint: Everybody pays them eventually.
The Clue: This word has a double letter in it.
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The Answer:
Wordle Analysis
Every day I check Wordle Bot to see how I did. You can check your Wordles with Wordle Bot right here.
I didn’t get it in two like yesterday, alas, but I’m still happy with three. My clue, of course, referred to the Pied Piper of Hamelin, a folktale that always frightened me a great deal when I was young.
I suppose pearl was a lucky guess. I came up with it for two reasons: First, my daughter shared this video with me of Eddie Vedder—lead singer of Pearl Jam—singing Better Man with Post Malone. It’s a fun watch and they seem to really be enjoying jamming out together. Neat cross-generational stuff. Hey maybe Post Malone should do a grunge album? Vedder could guest star and maybe they could rope in Neil Young just to make it complete.
Anyways, then I see a friend post ticket prices at upcoming Pearl Jam shows and they’re astronomical and that just makes me sad because Pearl Jam used to fight so hard against TicketMaster and their monopoly on the concert industry and I’d just hope these rich old rockstars wouldn’t gouge their fans. I am Jack’s crushing disappointment.
Anyways, it was a good word, yeah? Pearl, that is. And then I went with pride and after that I could only think of piper, but Wordle Bot says piker was also an option. Who could have known? Lucky me, piper was the one!
Competitive Wordle Score
I get 1 point for guessing in three and another point for beating the Bot who took four today. 2 for me. None for Bot!
Today’s Wordle Etymology
The word “piper” comes from the Old English “pipere,” which refers to a person who plays the pipe or pipes. The Old English term itself likely traces back to the Latin word “piper,” which means “pepper,” though in this context, the relevance seems to be more in phonetic similarity than semantic. The transition to referring to a musician, especially one who plays a pipe or pipes, comes from the practice of using the word to describe the instrument played (the pipe) and, by extension, the person playing it.
In the Latin context, “piper” as “pepper” pertains to the spice, which is unrelated to the musical meaning but shows the diverse paths of etymology. The musical sense of “piper” in English has been used since the medieval period, reflecting the long history of pipe instruments in European music and culture. Pipes have been popular instruments for centuries, used in various forms across cultures for both secular and sacred music, leading to the term “piper” being a common designation for musicians specializing in such instruments.
