Wordle Bulletin # 600 (February 9, 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 relatively small sample size, it is too soon to draw any statistically valid conclusions.
No. of puzzles solved: 60
Average: 3.40 (aspirational target 3.5 or less) 😊
% Puzzles solved in 4 guesses or less: 96.7% (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/M
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: STAGE
# Of Guesses: 4.0 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:
– Letter(s) with their position (s): NONE
– Letter(s) without their position (s): 3 (A, E, T)
Typical or atypical target word? —Typical
— # of Vowels: (Typical 2); 2 (A, E)
— # of Compound/paired consonants: (Typical 1); 1 compound /paired consonants (ST)
2nd word: SONIC; Even though the seed word revealed 2 vowels, I chose to stay with my tried and true “go-to” second word – SONIC. It revealed that the first letter in the target word is an S. At this stage, there were 7 possibilities, including two sets of orthographic neighbor words – [STAGE, STATE, STAKE and STAVE], [SPATE, and SKATE], and SAUTE.
3rd Word: It was time to deploy the EnotE strategy. Despite my best efforts, I could not come up with a word that would eliminate all but 1 possibilities. I had to make a sub-optimal choice and I selected KAPUT. It eliminated 5 but left me with 3 possibilities – STATE, STAVE and STAGE.
4th Word: I used frequency, position mix and usage data to pick from the three (STATE, STAVE and STAGE). I didn’t consider STAVE a regularly used word, leaving me with STATE and STAGE. Between these two, STATE was statistically preferred. Unfortunately, Wordle had picked STAGE.
# Of Possible Solutions after the 1st word: Too many
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2nd word: 7
# Of Possible Solutions after the 3rd word: 3
# Of Possible Solutions after the 4th word: 1
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EnotE© (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: Used at the 3rd word stage. The word chosen (KAPUT) was a sub-optimal word. It didn’t do the job. It is my hypothesis that the EnotE© strategy is not ideal for situations like today’s where 2 sets of orthographic neighbor words are among the possibilities. Revelations of three letters (but not their positions) by the seed word went for a naught.
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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. Luck was not in my corner today. I feel I was due for a 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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© 2023 Ashok Gupta All rights reserved.
EnotE (Eliminate not Enumerate) is copyrighted by Ashok Gupta
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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