Today’s meeting began with the Ringing of the Bell and Tom Strode leading us in song to the National Anthem.
The topic of our inspirational message today from Alexis Antracoli was about Spring and hope, beautifully illustrated by a poem of Emily Dickinson’s titled ‘Hope is the Thing with Feathers’.
Shelley MacMillan led our musical selection today with Love Makes the World Go ‘Round – in honor of Valentine’s Day! With a few edited verses, of course, to make it Rotary-specific!
President Mark thanked all of the following for their help with today’s meeting: Jim Egerdal, Leo Shedden, Don Duquette, Rob Shiff, Ben Bolen, Shelley MacMillan, Dennis Burke, John Juroe, Barbard Eichmuller, Agnes Reading, Pattie Katcher and Mary Steffek Blaske.
We have a long guest list today, so all stood to be acknowledged and thanked for attending today. Two birthdays were announced and no anniversaries this week.
A new Director vote for the 2024-25 year was then announced by Kathy Waugh. Kathy reminded us that we had an open Director of Club Service (2 yr) position and the sole nominee is Ugur Cetin. With no new nominations made from the floor, a motion was made, accepted and all were in favor. Congratulations to Ugur as the new Director of Club Service!
Norma Sarkar announced that the 2024 Robert S Northrup Humanitarian Award nominations are open from Feb 14 – March 15, 2024. Nominees must have demonstrated a long-term sustainable contribution to humanitarian efforts (local/national/international) and such contributions should include personal and not just administrative efforts. The nomination form must be completed and submitted online. Think about individuals that have made a significant humanitarian contribution, and please submit a nomination! The award recipient will be honored on May 8, 2024 and the recipient will be the speaker at that meeting.
Yolanda Whiten introduced today’s speaker, Tracy Bennett. A nod to the Wordle word game….BLISS best describes Tracy’s job! Yolanda stated that she had received many emails about why they love Wordle and she chose one to share: “I like to play ‘the wordle’, a way to connect to people including those in far-flung places!”
We then heard from Tracy that she has been a crossword puzzle creator for years and has a long history of crossword gigs including BUST magazine, Crosswords with Friends, The Inkubator and then the New York Times (NYT) as of 2020.
Devoted to making puzzles her whole life but starting in 2010, she won a local crossword solving contest. She then went to a tournament, didn’t win, but met other people who make puzzles, and realized this is something that she could do! She found a mentor to guide her, started submitting puzzles and got her first puzzle accepted in 2012. Tracy has had increasingly responsible puzzle jobs through 2018 but then transitioned to full time for the NYT in 2020: ‘Wordle Finally Has an Editor’!
As a self-described introvert, Tracy has had to overcome the challenge of being ‘out there’ and speaking in front of people.
A little Wordle history: Josh Wardle created the prototype in 2013, and it really took off in 2020. It went from a game for two, to a game for family and friends, launching it on WhatsApp. In January 2021 there were about 300,000 people playing, but in January 2022 when the NYT acquired Wordle…that increased and now there are millions of players! The first ever Wordle word: CIGAR. Tracy’s first word as the puzzle maker: BEGIN
Tracy works with a team of 5 others on the Puzzle & Games Team of the NYT. She spends 20% of her time on Wordle. Most of her time is spent working on crosswords, as they receive over 150 weekly submissions to get selected for publication. She spends time every day writing rejection emails! She also pre-edits about 2 puzzles weekly. As you may know, there is a day-of-the-week difficulty level with the Saturday puzzle typically the most difficult.
Tracy shared some insight on her work with Wordle: she works 6 weeks ahead due to the many folks who work behind the scenes to bring it to publication. Words are mostly randomly chosen and thought given to variety of difficulty, lexically and definition; variety of sound and letter patterns; avoiding derogatory secondary meanings; and considers news-cycle concerns (eg. crash…if there was a recent plane crash).
There are/were Wordle spinoffs: Absurdle, Waffle, Artle, Octordle, Nerdle, Worldle, Semantle, etc. Tracy mentioned that she receives many emails of how various puzzles have Wordle stories and Wordle synchronicities and touching stories. She’s had songs and poems sent to her including a Valentine poem from Billy & Terry (both 5 letter words!) that includes a 5 letter word in each line! She also receives complaints, as you can imagine.
Tracy then had us play a few Wordle games together – and many of us guessed the right words (some of us did not!). It seem we have quite a few seasoned Rotary Wordle players!
To close our meeting, we stood to recite the Rotary 4-Way Test. Of the things we think, say or do:
- Is it the truth
- Is it fair to all concerned
- Will it build goodwill and better friendships
- Is it beneficial to all concerned
Respectfully submitted by Pattie Katcher.
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