January 2022 was a banner month for the cultural micro-industry that consists of philosophical takes on suddenly-popular games. Like nothing since Pokémon Go, the online game Wordle fired the pontificators’ imagination as much as the popular imagination. People described as “psychology experts” were quoted saying that Wordle was popular because it releases dopamine, the brain’s “reward chemical” (which is the neurobollocks way of saying we like to do stuff), and because the arrangement of coloured blocks was “soothing” because it represented order in chaos. (So, like Tetris?) Other people described as “AI experts” alleged that Wordle could help us understand “selfdriving” cars. Which, I suppose, would be good if it helped them self-crash less?