Unless you consider New York Times Wordle scores to be news. Oh look, I think, Rhoda has posted on Facebook! Maybe she’ll tell about that grandbaby that’s due in November. Does anyone know yet whether it’s a girl or a boy? Last I heard, her daughter Cleome wouldn’t say.

Rhoda’s post turns out to be yet another Wordle score.

Since 1942, the Times has published its famous crossword puzzle. Then, “In 2014, we (the Times) introduced The Mini Crossword–followed by Spelling Bee, Letter Boxed and Tiles. A few years later, we proudly acquired Wordle and added Connections and Strands to our collection. We strive to offer puzzles for all skill levels that everyone can enjoy playing every day.”

Sometimes I think that’s all some people do every day. These word games, particularly Wordle, are addictive.

Oh yes, word games, according to the conventional wisdom, are salubrious for the brains of the elderly. By keeping our verbal acuity honed, we can stave off dementia, or at least slow the brain’s downhill progress. So they say.

I read, however, that a study performed at a leading university found that working crossword puzzles does indeed sharpen mental function, but only for finding words; don’t expect improvement in any other area, such as totting up how much you spent on cat food or wine last month, or remembering where you put your reading glasses.

The brain of the word puzzle addict probably looks like a house with nobody home, except for one tiny night light flickering in the speech and language room.

Right now I am too busy word-finding on my own for this column to bother with games. Notice how I came up with hard words like salubrious and acuity, both in the first paragraph? Much like the brain of the Wordle addict, mine is lit only by the flicker of one little candle in the speech and language room.

Words have different meanings for different people. Take Chuck Grassley, senator pro tempore of the United States Senate, for example. Grassley, who will be 92 on September 17, is at this writing the butt of Pres. Trump’s ire over something called senate blue slips, which has nothing to do with ladies’ undergarments.

In a different debate, Grassley was practically choking trying to get out the word BuzzFeed in a televised news interview, as if he were being asked to speak French or something, and it occurred to me as I watched him struggle that he would be more comfortable saying feed and seed instead.

In fact, I would bet money that Grassley’s problem with pronouncing BuzzFeed was that it seemed alien and somewhat suspect to him, while the term feed and seed, as familiar and comfortable to an elderly Iowan farmer as a well-worn pair of bedroom slippers, was right there in his mind ready to go; he was fighting the urge to say it.

“B-buzzFeed!”

Once he got BuzzFeed out, he probably had some very good ideas to impart, although I can’t for the life of me recall what any of them were.

Now, taking this as an example, I would suggest that thousands of other U.S. citizens who were watching Sen.Grassley in their own homes on television or online made very different observations.

“Atta boy, Chuck!” one viewer would say. “You tell ’em.”

“My goodness, Senator Grassley is holding up very well for his age,” another might comment, while a third might worry that maybe it was unpatriotic for the senator to question statements made by the president.

This same principle is at work in many diverse arenas. We may assume other people are seeing things the same way we do, or that they are coming to the same conclusions, but nothing could be further from the truth.

With everyone’s take-away so different, is it any wonder that any two people are unable to come to an agreement? Not to mention the Senate Judiciary Committee.

And by the way, Rhoda, thanks for your Wordle scores. So what else is new?

Keep that little candle burning, and have a good week.

(Martha Allen, of Keene Valley, has been writing for the News since 1996.)