Wordle Bulletin # 567 (January 7, 2023)
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: 28
Average: 3.39 (aspirational target 3.5)
% Puzzles solved in 4 guesses or less; 96.4% (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: LEMON
# Of Guesses: 3.7 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: It revealed the presence of the letters L, and E, but not their positions. Too many possible solutions at this stage.
Second Guess: SONIC; my go to 2nd word (SONIC) is a good discovery word. It reduced the possibilities to just 3 – LEMON, FELON AND MELON.
Third Guess: FELON ; FELON Had the highest frequency among the three words. Also, from a position mix point of view, this was the strongest candidate. Although it was not the answer, it led to the answer. In that sense, it was a good elimination word. Wordle is a game of luck and some skill. Probability based decisions are not always right, that’s the luck part. After a string of 3s, I was due for a 4.
# Of Possible Solutions after the seed word: Too many
# 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: Employed in 3rd step. It did the job. __________________________________________________________________________________________________
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. ☹
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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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© 2023 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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