Wordle is a free online word puzzle game. You can just visit the website and start playing right away. The game was created by a software engineer Josh Wordle as a gift for his partner who loves playing games.

The easy rule of Wordle attracts a wide audience. Wordle challenges people to find a five-letter word in six guesses. After each guess, the letters turn into different colours. Green means it’s the right letter and it’s in the right place. Yellow means the letter is in the word but in the wrong place. Grey means the letter’s not in the word at all. Everyone plays only one word a day, so players are excited to solve it. If they manage to guess in the first or second try, they can’t wait to show their results on Twitter. Wordle has suddenly become a huge part of people’s lives. That’s why Wordle has been sold to the New York Times for more than a million dollars.

Here are some tips for you to win in fewer guesses. For your first guess, it’s a good way to pick a word that contains at least two vowels* with popular consonants* r, t and s. If you have a yellow k in the second place of your first guess, you might try placing it in the fifth place instead -many five-letter words end with ck. It is also helpful to think of letters often appearing in sets of two or three, like tr/ai/ing. Don’t reuse grey letters and don’t forget letters can appear twice.

Wordle attracts lots of players since it is such a simple game. But will players keep being crazy about it in the future? Let’s wait and see.

2 . Have you ever heard of surfing? It’s hard, but if you have already tried snowboarding, which is also about balancing yourself on a board, so how hard could it possibly be? The key of surfing is how you position your feet on the board, and how you balance your weight on each foot.

Recently, Wavorhouse—an indoor surfing club appeared in Beijing. Mi Guo Yunchuan, the creator of the club, says “Beginners will need about 6 hours of training, just to be able to stand on the flowboard.” Actually, it will take much longer for beginners to start surfing. But indoor surfing can be a bit different from surfing at the beach. With indoor surfing, the machine creates a fast-moving sheet of water, which makes it harder to stay balanced on the flowboard. But with ocean surfing, reefs and currents can make it dangerous for surfer. So indoor surfing may be harder for beginners, but it is much safer. Also while surfing at the beach means you have to paddle all the way from the coast into the sea again and again. An indoor wave machine allows you to stay on the board all the time-that is, if you can!

There’s one tip that the indoor surfers can offer you, it’s this: Get used to falling off the flowboard. But don’t let this scare you off. Surfing is great for improving your balance, stamina and core strength. And it is fun. If you try, you will definitely come back for more. And one day, you will be a surfing master. You might think that it would take you years and years to master surfing. But the truth is that many of the world surfing champions are youngsters, even teenagers. It is just like the old Chinese saying, “Each new generation excels the last one.”

Paul Roberts, a 15-year-old boy, lives in New York. Like thousands of other American students, he usually goes away to a summer camp during the school holidays.

These camps are just for teenagers, without their parents, and Paul always has a great time. But this summer he’s doing something different—he’s going on an adventure holiday in Hawaii.

It’s a camping holiday for three weeks in Hawaii, for kids from 14 to 18. He’s leaving on July 23rd and coming back on August 12th.

First, they’re putting on backpacks and hiking through the forest in Hawaii. The place is very beautiful, with huge waterfalls and fascinating beaches. After this five-day walk, they’re staying for two days in a valley. The main activity here will be surfing. Paul doesn’t know how to surf, but instructors will teach him how to do it, and he’s really looking forward to this.

Then the organizers are providing mountain bikes and they’re going for long rides—about 30 miles a day, around one of Hawaii’s mountains. And on one day they’re meeting a local Hawaiian family and helping them to plant fruit trees on their farm. After that, they’re sailing for three days by the coast, and they’ll have a chance to swim with dolphins and sea turtles!

This sounds amazing. Finally, they’re going out for three days in sea kayaks—they’re visiting sea caves and swimming too.

Every night for the three weeks, they’re camping in tents, usually on the beach. This isn’t a holiday for couch potatoes! They say the kids have to be fit, and of course they have to know how to swim and ride a bike. The kids can’t use the computer or pad during the three weeks, but it’s going to be a really special experience.

5 . Zaouli is a traditional mask dance of Guro group in Cote D’lvoire, Africa. Created in the 1980s, the dance has various stories behind the origin, but most people agree it was inspired by a beautiful girl called Djela Lou Zaouli.

Although Zaouli was named after a girl and represents the beauty of women, it’s only performed by men. Each Guro village has its own Zaouli dancer. They dance at celebrations, funerals and other special events. And the dance is supposed to bring wealth and peace.

Traditionally, masks play an important role in Ivorian culture. Zaouli is no exception. Usually with decorations of snakes and birds, the Zaouli mask can take up to 6 days to make. It shows a woman’s thin and smiling face, and isn’t expected to be seen until the start of the dance. Moreover, the process of putting on the mask is considered sacred, so filming isn’t allowed. Once the dancer puts on the mask, he’s no longer himself, moving even faster as if he’s taken over by the mask’s superhuman spirit.

Zaouli is extremely physically demanding. The dancer holds his body still while his legs perform a great number of different moves fast. During one performance, he never repeats those moves. They may look similar, but the complexity of his feet movements is very difficult to figure out and amazing to watch. On average it takes a dancer seven years to perfect his moves.

Known as the “most impossible dance in the world”, this energetic dance mixes many elements of Ivorian culture. In 2017, it was added to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It even appeared on CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala in 2018. In recent years, Zaouli has gone popular on international social media like Tik Tok and Facebook.

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The history of chocolate begins with Theobroma cacao. People make chocolate from the seeds on the tree. Chocolate means “food of the gods”. For many years, people enjoy the chocolate very much.

It is said that Mayan people of Central America first learned to plant cacao trees around 2,000 years ago. The Maya took the cacao trees from the rainforest and grew them around their homes. They cooked the cacao seeds, then made them into a soft paste. They put water and spices in the paste to make not sweet chocolate drink. But not all people could drink it because it was so expensive. Farmers grow cacao trees in many countries in Africa, Central and South America. The trees are difficult to grow.

Cacao and chocolate are an important part of Maya culture. Some people think the word for chocolate come from the Aztec word “xocolatl”, which means “not sweet water” in the Nahuatl language. Others think the word “chocolate” is from Mayan and Nahuatl words.

Chocolate making is a big business. Each year, the market of the cacao crop around the world can provide more than five billion dollars. People in the United States like chocolate very much. Everyone in America eats more than five kilograms of chocolate every year.

9 . Now, the VOA Special programmer WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.

(MUSIC)

Today, we will show the word “waste”. It is something people tell us not to do. At home, parents tell us not to watch food in the classroom, teachers tell us not to waste time. On sports team, coaches tell us not to waste energy.

Waste often happens because we use something too much or because we do not use it well, we often use “waste” in arguments. lf we are unhappy with someone, we can say: “Don’t waste my time.” And if you are not happy with something you did, you can say, “Well, that was a complete waste of time.”

We also find it in some useful expressions. The first one is “Haste makes waste.” “Haste” means doing something very quickly. “Haste makes waste” means if you move or do something in a hurry, you could make mistakes. And then it takes more time to correct mistakes. So, if you see your friends doing homework in a hurry, you can suggest, “Be careful with your work, you might make mistakes and then our teacher will make you do it again. Haste makes waste, you know.”

The other common expression is: “Waste Not, Want Not.” This means that if you never waste anything, especially food or money, you will always have it when you need it the most.

Now Let’s hope learning about “waste” in this Words and Their Stories was not a “complete waste of your time.”

(MUSIC)

I’m Anna Matteo!

Listen again next week for another Words and Their Stories programme from VOA.

10 . Let’s look at different China from their perspective.

Some excerpts from each book.

I believe that if the Chinese are left free to fully accept what they want of our civilization, and to refuse what is bad, they will be able to achieve a rapid growth from their own tradition, and to make a very great result, combining our strengths with theirs.

For someone with a natural curiosity about food, Chengdu in the mid-nineties was a kind of paradise. It was all there, under your nose. In the backstreets, people cooked dinner for their family. The pleasant smell of Sichuan pepper hung in the air on warm autumn nights. The most common restaurant would often be serving Chinese food better than any you could find in London.

When I read their works there was a freshness. I had never seen that before from any other student of mine. For example, I had no idea that classical Chinese poetry often makes scallions of women’s fingers, and they had no idea Shakespeare’s poems had been reviewed so many times that they nearly died. Our exchange suddenly made everything new.

When the Chinese use the term “China”, they usually refer to Chinese civilization—its history, the dynasties, Confucius, the ways of thinking, their relationships and customs, the guanxi (the network of personal connections), the family and the values...