The Observer
09.01.22 17iPhone came along and swept away
the Black Berry’s practical good
sense, the touchscreen temptress
not great for typing anything at
length, though in exchange it did
offer the ability to pretend your
fi ngers were riding a skateboard
or playing a piano. With hindsight,
that could be the moment it all
started to go wrong.
Nevertheless, the Black Berry
persisted. My favourite holdout
was Kim Kardashian, who knows
a thing or two about monetising
platforms and perhaps knew
something we did not. She
tweeted her despair at the death
of her Black Berry Bold as late as- But only last week, on
4 January 2022, after several
spluttering death rattles and
a number of false alarms,
has the Black Berry fi nally
shuffl ed off this mortal
coil, with the company
ending support for its
mobile devices, effectively
killing off most of them.
Is there a word for the specifi c
wave of nostalgia that greets the
demise of something that has long
been obsolete?
PEOPLE
I
got my Black Berry for the
Reading festival, somewhere
around the mid- 00s. Another
writer, also there for the
NME, had suggested that it
would change the game:
it meant no more running
to a backstage cabin to
hurriedly type up a review
on a spare computer, if
one was even spare;
instead, you could just
write as you watched,
with frantic thumbs.
It left more time for
drinking pints from
plastic cups and trying
to get someone from
Foals to pose for a photo with
a fake moustache. (Reader,
they declined.)
Much like the Reading
festival, I left the Black Berry
behind a long time ago, as a
relic of youth. Soon after, theN
ot since Words With
Friends , not since Draw
Something , has an online
game spread with such
vigour. Wordle , a short, sweet word
game in which the player has six
attempts to guess a fi ve-letter word,
hangman-style, is everywhere,
leaving green-and-yellow-spotted
grids in its wake. It was created by
software developer Josh Wardle,
who wanted to come up with a
game that his crossword-loving
partner would enjoy playing during
lockdown. Then he sent it to his
family Whats App group and then he
gave it to everyone.
Like many, I fell for its charms
last week. When it was released tothe public in November, 90 people
played it, but now hundreds of
thousands are on it. I failed to get
my fi rst one – for some reason, I
thought “tiler” was a better option
than “tiger” – but I got the most
recent in three tries.
I have placed a lot of hope
in Wordle, which might seem
disproportionate for a quick game,
but hear me out. This is not an era in
which good things are taken at face
value. We are cynical, irritable and
tired, and if there is a bad intention
to be read into anything, someone
will scratch away at it until they
decide that they have found it. For
now, Wordle seems to exist outside
of that. A new puzzle appears justBetty White
Farewell, the last
and funniest of
the Golden Girls
Kim Kardashian
Like her, I too
despair at the
BlackBerry’s fall
Josh Wardle
In Wordle, he has given us
an unalloyed pleasure
The stories behind the names in the news
Rebecca Nicholson
once a day. It doesn’t demand much
time and in an attention economy
built on the zombi fying potential of
an endless scroll or click, this seems
like a generous gesture. The scarcity
makes it more desirable: you can’t
get tired of something so shy and
retiring. The website is ad-free, there
are no paid upgrades, no chance
to reveal an extra letter by shelling
out cash. When Wardle noticed that
people liked to discuss their results,
he added a function allowing them
to share their grids, hence the green-
and-yellow proliferating on social
media like algae in a warm spell.
That’s all there is to it. It is simple,
fun, satisfying and free. Even its
name, a nod to Wardle, is charming;
even its origins – the New York
Times has called it “ a love story ”,
describing it as a lockdown gift
from Wardle to his partner – are
unbelievably sweet. I want to be
uncynical about Wordle, I want to
be unsuspicious, because right now,
Wordle suggests that we can have
nice things without breaking them.Comment & Analysis
I
have always maintained that
The Golden Girls is muckier,
funnier and more anarchic
than most contemporary
comedies could ever dream of being
and I treasure my DVD box set as
comfort watch, style inspiration and
blueprint for getting older. What
a treat, then, to witness people
sharing their favourite Rose scenes
online, after the death of Betty
White , the last living Golden Girl,
who died at the age of 99, a couple
of weeks before her 100th birthday.
Many of the tributes highlighted
White’s impeccable comic timing.
It can’t have been easy to play Rose,
famously the ditsy one, against
Blanche ’s blowsy naughtiness,
Dorothy ’s dour wit or Sophia ’s
fabulously blunt ways, but White
sailed through on comedy genius,
her sweetness a perfect balance
to all the acidity, one look from
her enough to send the audience
into raptures.
You can’t help but wonder how
White might have felt about People
magazine’s latest issue, which went
to print before the sad news broke,
and hit newsstands with her
face on the cover and the
celebratory declaration ,
“Betty White Turns
100!” In a certain
light, you could say
it looks like one
fi nal punchline.
nt before the sad news broke,
it newsstandswith her
n the cover and the
ratory declaration ,
y White Turns
In a certain
you could say
ks like one
punchline.