How WordTry Helped My Remote Team Bond
Managing a remote team can be tricky. You miss those little moments that happen naturally in an office - the casual conversations by the coffee machine, the shared laughs over someone's desk plant, the collective groan when the printer breaks down for the third time this week.
When our company went fully remote two years ago, I noticed our team meetings felt... sterile. We'd jump straight into work talk, get through our agenda, and sign off. Efficient? Sure. But we were losing that human connection that makes work feel less like work.
Then one of our developers mentioned WordTry during a standup, and everything changed.
It Started Small
Jake mentioned he'd been playing this word game every morning and thought it might be fun for the team. Honestly, I was skeptical. We're a software team - do we really need another thing to distract us from shipping code?
But I figured, why not? We started our Monday standup by everyone sharing their WordTry result from that morning. Just a quick "got it in 4 today" or "that was brutal, took me all 6 guesses."
The Magic Happened Gradually
What I didn't expect was how much personality started coming through in these tiny shares. Sarah always leads with vowel-heavy words and gets mad when that strategy backfires. Mike has this weird thing about never using the same starting word twice. Emma somehow always guesses obscure words that actually turn out to be right.
These little quirks became running jokes. We started good-naturedly roasting each other's strategies. Mike would dramatically announce his new "word of the day" starter. Sarah would defend her vowel obsession with charts and statistics (she's our data analyst, so of course she made charts).
Beyond Just a Game
The five minutes we spend on WordTry at the start of each meeting has become the most valuable part. It's when we actually connect as humans. Someone will mention they're struggling with the puzzle because they're having a rough morning, and suddenly we're checking in on each other as people, not just colleagues.
Last month, when our project manager Lisa was dealing with a family emergency, she mentioned she'd forgotten to do WordTry that morning. The whole team immediately started sharing their results with her, walking through their thought process, basically playing the puzzle together. It was this sweet moment of care disguised as game talk.
The Competitive Element
I won't lie - we've gotten pretty competitive about it. We have an unofficial leaderboard in our team Slack channel where people post their daily results. There's friendly trash talk when someone gets it in 2 guesses (looking at you, Emma) and group sympathy when someone breaks their streak.
The competition isn't mean-spirited though. It's more like having fantasy football for word nerds. It gives us something fun and low-stakes to be invested in together.
Better Communication All Around
Here's what I didn't see coming: starting our meetings with this light, fun interaction has actually improved our work communication too. People seem more relaxed, more willing to speak up, more comfortable admitting when they're stuck on something.
I think it's because WordTry creates this shared experience of being puzzled, trying different approaches, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding. It normalizes the idea that it's okay to not know something immediately, that working through problems together is actually fun.
Easy to Include Everyone
The other thing I love about this ritual is how inclusive it is. WordTry doesn't require any special knowledge or skills. Whether you're a recent grad or a senior engineer, whether English is your first language or your third, everyone can participate on equal footing.
And if someone forgets to play or doesn't want to share, that's totally fine too. There's no pressure. It's just there as this optional moment of connection for whoever wants it.
Spreading Beyond Our Team
Other teams at our company have started doing the same thing after hearing about our WordTry ritual. The marketing team apparently gets way more dramatic about their shares than we do (shocking, I know). The design team has started making custom graphics to go with their results.
It's become this organic culture thing that's spread throughout the company, giving everyone a shared language and experience.
The Real Impact
Look, I'm not going to pretend that a word game solved all the challenges of remote work. We still deal with timezone issues and communication gaps and the occasional Zoom fatigue. But WordTry gave us something we didn't realize we were missing: a reason to see each other as whole people, not just work functions.
Our team feels closer now. We laugh more during meetings. People are more comfortable being vulnerable about challenges they're facing. And it all started with five letters and a friendly competition over who could guess them fastest.
If you're managing a remote team and looking for ways to build connection, I can't recommend this enough. It's simple, it's fun, and it's just different enough from work to remind everyone that we're humans first, colleagues second.