Wordle Bulletin # 560 (December 31, 2022)
Strategy
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.
My current performance vs. the goals:
I started using the current set of seed and 2nd words on 12/9/2022. My performance since then is summarized below. Due to small sample size, it is too soon to draw any statistically valid conclusions.
No. of puzzles solved: 23
Average: 3.39 (aspirational target 3.5)
% Puzzles solved in 4 guesses or less; 95.7% (Goal 95%)
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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: MANLY
# Of Guesses: 4.2 WordleBot average per Marc McLaren*; 3 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: Presence of A and L but not their positions.
Second Guess: My “go-to” 2nd word (SONIC) revealed the consonant N in the 3rd position. After the second word there were four possibilities – MANLY, WANLY, LANKY and BANAL. I didn’t think WANLY is a commonly used word.
Third Guess: I chose one of the possible words as an elimination word (MANLY). The word LANKY would also have worked. The choice between the two was based on frequency data. Luckily today frequency data worked.
# Of Possible Solutions after the seed word: too many
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2nd word: 4
# Of Possible Solutions after the 3rd word: 1
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EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: Worked as designed (3rd guess). Selection of one of the possibilities enabled the score of 3.
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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 on my side.
I use WordHippo to squeeze out all the possibilities for a given set of letters. WordHippo had failed me yesterday. So today I went back to my time consuming “manual enumeration methodology”. No surprise, once again today WordHippo missed one word (BANAL). Going forward I will have to rely on the time consuming “manual enumeration” methodology. ☹
I was using WordHippo as a productivity tool. But, given its unreliability I will have to forgo it.
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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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