Wordle Bulletin # 545 (December 16, 2022)
My strategy is built to ensure I solve 95% of the puzzles in 4 guesses or less. It is not built to always shoot for the lowest score possible. The score depends a lot on the seed word. Wordle is a game of luck and skill. My goal is to score an average solve rate of 4 guesses. My aspirational goal is 3.5 average and <5% 5/6 guesses.
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Statistical Facts:
Typical Wordle Word Construct: 2 Vowels and one compound consonant (example KN or TCH)/paired consonant (example PP) ; seen with >50% frequency
10 Most frequent consonants (in declining order): R, T, L, S, N, C, H, P, D, and G
6 Vowels (in declining order): E, A, O, I, U, Y
10 Most frequent letters (in declining order): E, A, R, O, T, L, I, S, N, and C
Frequency of the 5 vowels in the five positions: 15%, 49%, 54%, 35% and 24% respectively.
Position of the letter “Y”: About 80% of all the “Ys” in Wordle are found in the 5th position.
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Today’s Wordle:
Target Word: PROBE
# Of Guesses: 4.1 WordleBot average per Marc McLaren*; 4 for WordleGuru
Seed Word: ALERT (Top 3 consonants and top 2 vowels) – No change – this is my go-to Seed word.
What we learned from the Seed Word: 1 vowel (E), and 1 consonant (R), but not their exact positions.
Second Guess: The choice of the second guess depends on the learning from the seed word. Given that we only revealed one vowel and most of Wordle words contain 2 vowels, we needed to find at least one more vowel. Also, we needed to find possibly 1 more consonant since only 1 was revealed by the seed word.
I chose my “go-to” 2nd word – SONIC. It revealed one more vowel (O), but no consonant. After the 2nd guess there were 11 possibilities.
Third Guess: I could not come up with an elimination word to eliminate 10 of the 11 possibilities. It took me some time to zero in on an elimination word. I like to use one of the possibilities as an elimination word. The third guess (DROVE) is one of the 11 possibilities. Unfortunately, it only eliminated 7 of the 11 leaving me with 4 (PROBE, FROZE, BROKE, and GROPE). I had to find one word from the 4 that would be a good elimination word and eliminate three of the four. I chose PROBE. I didn’t expect it to be the target word. But luckily for me it turned out to be the target word. I’m glad to come out of this mess in four guesses.
# Of Possible Solutions after the seed word: >100
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2nd word: 11
# Of Possible Solutions after the 3rd word: 4
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EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: Needed it twice.
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Final thoughts: Wordle is a game of luck and skill. Sometimes luck favors the game and some time it favors the player. Today it was my turn. One has to be lucky in life and in games like this to succeed. The 4th guess (elimination word) turned out to be the target word. I was mentally ready for a score of 5.
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My other work you may find interesting
I write Rhyming Prose (Prose that rhymes). My work in this area can be found on my website, Rhyming Prose — … when a poem won’t do it!
I have also started writing free-verse poems, haikus and songs. My work in this area can be found on my website, Budding Poets Corner – Poet Laureates of Tomorrow
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© 2022 Ashok Gupta All rights reserved.
Wordle and WordleBot are trademarks owned by the New York Times.
*The WordleBot score I refer to comes from Tom’s Guide by Marc McLaren. Marc writes his post at around 7 AM U.K. time.
https: //www.tomsguide.com/news/what-is-todays-wordle-answer#section-previous-wordle-answers
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