Wordle Bulletin # 555 (December 26, 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: JUDGE
# Of Guesses: 5.2 WordleBot average per Marc McLaren*; 5 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 but not its exact position.
Second Guess: My “go-to” 2nd word (SONIC) didn’t reveal any letters. Still a combination of the seed word and the 2nd guess reduced the set of possibilities to 10, including two sets of orthographic neighbor words. (Ouch)
Third Guess: I could not think of a word that would eliminate 9 of the 10 possibilities. I had to come up with a less effective word. I prefer to use one of the possibilities as an elimination word. The word I chose (BUDGE) reduced the possibilities to 2. But the situation was dire! The two possibilities left are part of orthographic neighbor set (JUDGE and FUDGE). ☹
Fourth Guess: My gut feel was leading me to JUDGE, but my analytical side preferred FUDGE based on frequency data. I went with the analytical answer – FUDGE. Unfortunately, my gutfeel was right once again (similar thing yesterday). ☹
# Of Possible Solutions after the seed word: too many
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2nd word: 10
# Of Possible Solutions after the 3rd word: 2
# Of Possible Solutions after the 4th word: 1
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EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: Was of limited effectiveness today.
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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, my gutfeel would have given me a score of 4.
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Possible tweaking of EnotE strategy: When choosing an elimination word, don’t choose one of the members of an orthographic set (in today’s example, don’t use BUDGE, JUDGE, or FUDGE). Instead try to find an elimination word that has 2 of the three letters that vary among the set (in today’s example, the elimination word should have included the letters B, J and F). However, it may leave uncovered many non-orthographic possibilities. Life is tough and all about compromises!
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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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