Kamala Harris says she's on a 48-game Wordle streak and uses the same starting word every day

Kamala Harris
(Image credit: Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The vice presidents, they're just like us: obsessed with Wordle.

Vice President Kamala Harris chatted with The Ringer about her love of Wordle after revealing she plays the game at night when she "can't sleep." The online sensation, which was bought by The New York Times, involves trying to guess a new five-letter word each day. Harris told The Ringer the game is "genius" and she loves it because "for me it's a brain cleanser."

"So it's in the middle of very long days, back-to-back meetings on a lot of intense issues," she said. "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."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

While Harris said Wordle "gets put aside" when she's traveling, she admitted, "I must have played it when I was in Poland. But we won't talk about that, right?" She says her current streak is 48, although like some other players, it "got messed up when it got moved over to The New York Times."

Regular Wordle players can either start with the same word every day or mix it up, but Harris falls into the former camp, revealing her starting word is always "notes" because it has "a healthy mix of consonants and vowels."

She doesn't just play Wordle, though. The vice president is also a fan of the Times' mini crossword and Spelling Bee — but she's forced to play the "cheapy free version" because her phone doesn't allow her to subscribe to anything. Plus, Harris can't share her Wordle scores with anyone because "my phone doesn't let me text anybody, which is sad."

When asked for any examples of stressful moments where she played Wordle to relax, Harris said, "They're all classified. Sorry."

Read the full discussion with the White House's own Wordle fiend at The Ringer.

Explore More
Brendan Morrow

Brendan worked as a culture writer at The Week from 2018 to 2023, covering the entertainment industry, including film reviews, television recaps, awards season, the box office, major movie franchises and Hollywood gossip. He has written about film and television for outlets including Bloody Disgusting, Showbiz Cheat Sheet, Heavy and The Celebrity Cafe.