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The first few references to a pop culture phenomenon are playful winks. Then the desperate marketers descend like ravenous ravens to thrust their beaks into the whiff of novelty and caw, “me too! me too!”

It turned out that a recent supermarket ad wasn’t the last wordle from Singapore’s social media account managers but just the beginning of cringe-worthy attempts to cash in on the internet obsession.

Months late to the game, Singapore has indeed caught onto Wordle, the daily word puzzle, and now ministries and brands are coming up with their own subpar renditions of random five-letter words (some of which don’t even make sense) to advertise, inform, or even hold contests.

The Ministry of Health says to lay off the goodies as Chinese New Year rings in tomorrow with words such as “Watch,” “Plate,” “Drink,” “Water,” “Lower” and “Sugar.” Or spend wisely with “Money,” “Asset,” “Spend,” “Value,” “Saved” and “Share,” according to the Finance Ministry.

Then you have the Singapore Police Force which with no context — “Solve,” “Crime,” “Fight,” and “Scams” — and landed on “Polis,” a city in Greek to some but slang for “Police” in Singapore.

There’s also the Ministry of Social and Family Development, whose apparently translate to helping each other out in the house.  

Meanwhile, e-commerce brand Shopee thought they had it in the bag with letters “XNKL,” “GXFC,” “WSRY,” “ZCJB,” “DJDL.” Intended to be the first letters of Chinese New Year greetings in Mandarin, it looked like item or OTP codes instead. Shopee settled for “HCNY” at the end for “Happy Chinese New Year.” 

The Land Transport Authority promoted different modes of payments while riding its buses and trains, and National Water Agency PUB linked their alert channels for flash floods.

Probiotic drink manufacturer Vitagen Singapore told Singapore to look out for their drink with eight times less sugar with “Drink,” “Eight,” “Xless,” “White,” “Sugar,” and “Daily.”

Many more chimed in with shopping malls Suntec City and Clarke Quay, and Changi Airport giving out vouchers for those who guess their word right.

Some users have called them out for not following the rules.

“All of them are playing it really badly, using letters that aren’t in the word. Either that, or they’re lucky or cheating,” Redditor Boredeth wrote yesterday.

“But some of the word guesses don’t make logical sense: they use the same letter for the next guess even though it is already shown to not exist in the word,” another Redditor Halfheartlion wrote.

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