The Wordle craze is sweeping across the phones of bored commuters and bathroom breakers, and like every good phenomenon, politicians are finding cringey new ways to make us collectively shudder.

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, or possibly someone working communications for her, figured it would be a good idea to piggyback onto the popular daily online word game — which has been thrust into the headlines due to a sudden rise in popularity — as a vehicle to criticize Doug Ford's rollout of rapid testing.

But whoever crafted Horwath's tweet seemed to lack even a basic understanding of how Wordle works.

IMO politicians using Wordle memes need to post ones that follow the basic structure of the game; it does not reflect well on you that you apparently don’t understand a casual game I play every morning on the can. https://t.co/cjL7g9fscN

— Dan Seljak (@anotherglassbox) January 14, 2022

The concept of the game has players attempting to guess a five-letter word within six tries. Letters are marked green, yellow, or gray, green representing a letter is correct, yellow meaning the letter is in the word but not the correct spot, and gray meaning the letter is not in the word at all.

Horwath's "Fordle" meme seems to make up its own rules, the message using Wordle imagery but showing not even a shred of understanding of how the game is played.

5th guess was just lucky

— ⓕⓡⓐⓣⓔⓢ (@CratesOfFrates) January 13, 2022

It's not the first time a political leader has used a cringe-inducing reference to a popular app to come off as more relatable, Horwath's game of "Fordle" triggering flashbacks of Hillary Clinton's infamous "Pokemon GO to the polls" line.

If cringe was a five letter word

— David Demchuk : 👻 (he/him) (@spo0ky_dad) January 14, 2022

A politician pushing 60 years old trying to connect with an online trend through memes is rarely a winning formula, and while some are saying that this is a clever play on the Wordle trend, others are seeing it as a misguided attempt to tap into the craze.

pic.twitter.com/iIv6B65Df3

— Adam Lockett (@AdamLockett34) January 14, 2022

The overwhelming majority of responses fall in the cringe category, though the meme's intended message of "free rapid tests for all" still seems to be popular.

This is cheesy and terrible

— Connor (@connordpeters) January 13, 2022

Others are just upset that Horwath wasn't offering any solutions to Thursday's Wordle of the day.