Wordle Bulletin # 551 (December 22, 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: EXCEL
# Of Guesses: 4.4 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: the presence of E, and L but not their positions.
Second Guess: The choice of the second guess depends on the learning from the seed word. I tried my “go-to” word – SONIC. We learned the presence of C, but not its position.
Third Guess: After the 2nd guess there were 3 possibilities – BELCH, EXCEL, and CYCLE. Either of EXCEL or CYCLE would have eliminated 2 leaving with the answer. I chose CYCLE. The answer was EXCEL. ☹
# Of Possible Solutions after the seed word: >50
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2nd word: 3
# Of Possible Solutions after the 3rd word: 1
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EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: worked.
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Final thoughts: Wordle is a game of luck and skill. Sometimes luck favors the game and sometimes it favors the player. Today luck was not on my side. In hindsight I should have also considered the mix of X and Y among the 5 positions. A process improvement for the future.
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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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