- Kamala Harris said she has a 48-day Wordle streak and a "100 percent" solving rate, the latter of which she intends to keep.
- Harris told The Ringer she uses "notes" as her consistent starting word to figure out the day's 5-letter answer.
- The vice president also plays other games on her phone, but security restrictions thwart some of those efforts too.
Vice President Kamala Harris says she too has fallen under the spell of The New York Times' sensation Wordle, carrying on her streak on the popular game even during her March trip to reassure European leaders.
"Wordle, for me, is like a brain cleanser," Harris told The Ringer last week in an interview that was published on Monday. "So it's in the middle of very long days, back-to-back meetings on a lot of intense issues. If I have a break, let's say that people are running late or my little 25 minutes for lunch, sometimes while I'm eating I'll figure out Wordle."
But don't expect Harris to start dropping her results on Twitter. Harris said that Secret Service-related security restrictions mean she can't brag in a group chat about the prowess of her guesses or tweet out to the masses how quickly she guessed the day's 5-word answer. Words with Friends this is not.
"No, because my phone does not let me do that. My phone doesn't let me text anybody, which is sad," she told The Ringer's Claire McNear. Besides, Harris joked, the best stories about her play thus far are "all classified."
Instead, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and a growing number of her staff get to hear about her daily performance.
"He plays Wordle, absolutely. So we will say, 'How many tries did it take you today?' 'How many tries did it take you?' 'Did you get it?' 'Did you get it?' Oh yeah, we are definitely checking in every day about Wordle," Harris told The Ringer.
As of last week, Harris said she had a 48-day streak, meaning she has correctly guessed the word each day for just over two months. She has also solved every word that she's ever attempted.
"I have 100 percent, and I intend to keep it that way," Harris said of her solving rate.
As she admitted, that means she found time to squeeze in the game during her March 12 trip to Poland to reassure US allies after Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine. Harris added that her streak was affected after The Times purchased Wordle in February for a low seven-figure sum.
While the vice president admits that matters of state come first, she's also armed with a strategy to keep her 100 percent solving rate alive — part of that is using "notes" as her consistent starting word.
"I think that you have to have a healthy mix of consonants and vowels, and a lot of words come with an S," she said. "For example, today there was an S and an E, I believe. Did you do yours?" (The Wordle that day was "shame.")
Harris gushed about the other Times games she enjoys as well. She's a big fan of the Mini, a smaller version of the Times Crossword. The vice president also loves Spelling Bee, another spelling-based game, only this one challenges players to spell as many words as possible with just seven letters. But once again, security restrictions thwart her efforts.
"I guess I get the cheapy free version of the Spelling Bee," Harris, who said she's not allowed to subscribe to things from her phone, told The Ringer.
Stuck behind the paywall, Harris said she'll never get to be Queen Bee, the prize reserved for a player who finds all the possible words in a given day's Spelling Bee.
"It's really annoying, but it may actually be for the best because I'd probably otherwise spend too much time at night not sleeping," she said.