I’m an avid fan of Wordle. While I was late to the game (literally), I’ve been playing it everyday for more than a year now. Through it, myself and my mom chat more than ever before — we literally text our results to each other every morning, so it’s almost become as much a ritual as a daily game. And as I’m sure many of you know, with daily playing comes the inevitable build-up of the winning streak. The higher it gets, the more we sweat when we reach 5 or even 6 guesses.
Most will have lost one game or another, perhaps due to an annoying word with just too many options, or simply because it’s something we’ve never heard of before. But, in either case, both myself and my mom, will (with teeth gritted) gracefully accept defeat as well as the score reset — no peeking at today’s Wordle answer for us. But, to my horror, my impressive streak of 180 recently reset to zero for no reason at all — I didn’t lose a game, I didn’t miss a day. Here’s what happened.
Why did my Wordle streak reset?
I recently booked myself a well-deserved holiday from the UK to Florida. And while I planned to be immersed in the sun and theme parks, of course I intended to continue playing Wordle everyday with the best Wordle start words. On the day of the flight, I played as usual before we took off — no issues there — my streak had just reached 180 so I was looking forward to hitting the 200 milestone. 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 had reset to zero.
What had happened here? I hadn’t missed a day and I hadn’t played between 7 p.m. and midnight Florida-time, which would have been after midnight back in the UK. I was disappointed to say the least. I continued playing daily and built up another streak of 14 days by the time I flew back to the UK. Strangely it didn’t reset itself coming back, only flying out, so the confusion mounted up.
After returning, I did some research into the problem. It turns out that when it comes to long-distance travelling, Wordle unfortunately has a tendency to sometimes reset itself, reducing any winning streak back down to zero. That’s the case even if you continue to play daily and keep winning. Whether or not this relates to the difference in time zones is difficult to say — especially since I still played the game everyday with plenty of time to spare in both time zones. But, in any case, it’s something every Wordle-enthusiast who plans to travel should be aware of.
Can you get your Wordle streak back?
To get my streak back, in accordance with MUO, I tried switching off the ‘Set Automatically’ option in my Date and Time settings, and then resetting the date on my phone to the day my streak vanished. I then had to re-complete that day’s Wordle before switching back to the current date. To my dismay this didn’t solve the problem — in fact, I only lost the 14 day streak I had built up in the interim. Unfortunately it seems that my streak is lost for good.
Preventing this from happening in the future isn’t exactly clarified, but it should be possible because Wordle just fixed its biggest flaw. Logically, by creating a New York Times account, your streak should be saved in these instances. Or if you want to take extreme precautions, you could alternatively have someone back home complete the daily Wordles in the interim using the same account. If your Wordle streak means a lot to you, these may be worth exploring. Personally, I will continue playing Wordle, but this is certainly something the game should look to fix.
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Katie Mortram
Homes Editor
Katie looks after everything homes-related, from kitchen appliances to gardening tools. She also covers smart home products too, so is the best point of contact for any household advice!She has tested and reviewed appliances for over 6 years, so she knows what to look for when finding the best. Her favorite thing to test has to be air purifiers, as the information provided and the difference between performances is extensive.
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6 CommentsComment from the forums
CitySlicker1 This has inexplicably occured to me several times, but I have not gone away anywhere since long before Wordle existed. Sometimes I use a VPN indicating that I'm at a different location though, so now I wonder if that's why it happens. Weird. And very frustrating!
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Denis F This must have happened a couple of days ago. Like others I am fairly sure I have not missed a day. My longest streak is over 400 and I have only lost a couple of times at the start in well over 500 games. It is unlikely to be a time shift problem although I do travel. The thing that happened two days ago is I accepted an update on my Samsung phone. Not a big problem but annoying.
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ada2 My streak reset 6 days ago. The start page had a new banner at the bottom. Coincidence?
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Denis F Interesting. My partner also lost her run at the same time. Maybe we forgot to do it while we were away. But could be an error from NY Times
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JeffBishop Wordle is programmed to punish time travelers. Traveling forward in time is fine, but traveling backward across date lines is not. If you log on to Wordle today, but Wordle thinks you've already been there tomorrow, it wipes out both days' scores and with it your streak. That's probably why the author lost her streak while traveling from the UK to the US but not vice-versa. And it's definitely why I lost my own streak today (not traveling, just playing with local time zone settings on my home computer).
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Denis F JeffBishop said:
JeffBishop said:
Wordle is programmed to punish time travelers. Traveling forward in time is fine, but traveling backward across date lines is not. If you log on to Wordle today, but Wordle thinks you've already been there tomorrow, it wipes out both days' scores and with it your streak. That's probably why the author lost her streak while traveling from the UK to the US but not vice-versa. And it's definitely why I lost my own streak today (not traveling, just playing with local time zone settings on my home computer).
Wordle is programmed to punish time travelers. Traveling forward in time is fine, but traveling backward across date lines is not. If you log on to Wordle today, but Wordle thinks you've already been there tomorrow, it wipes out both days' scores and with it your streak. That's probably why the author lost her streak while traveling from the UK to the US but not vice-versa. And it's definitely why I lost my own streak today (not traveling, just playing with local time zone settings on my home computer).You could be right. Maybe we did Wordle too early on 25 August as we are 7 hours ahead. But it seems the program resets according to local time. However, I do not remember the word for that day so maybe we did not do it (2 separate games). So I reverted back with my phone and did the word for that day. Someone said that preserves the sequence. But when I went back to today, normal time, I had to re-do today's word. Then it set my run back at one, added two games to my total but left the longest run at 421. It read 1 and 421 whereas it should have reverted back to 16 and 421. In fact it should be 437 and 437
JeffBishop said:
Wordle is programmed to punish time travelers. Traveling forward in time is fine, but traveling backward across date lines is not. If you log on to Wordle today, but Wordle thinks you've already been there tomorrow, it wipes out both days' scores and with it your streak. That's probably why the author lost her streak while traveling from the UK to the US but not vice-versa. And it's definitely why I lost my own streak today (not traveling, just playing with local time zone settings on my home computer).JeffBishop said:
Wordle is programmed to punish time travelers. Traveling forward in time is fine, but traveling backward across date lines is not. If you log on to Wordle today, but Wordle thinks you've already been there tomorrow, it wipes out both days' scores and with it your streak. That's probably why the author lost her streak while traveling from the UK to the US but not vice-versa. And it's definitely why I lost my own streak today (not traveling, just playing with local time zone settings on my home computer).Reply
