Wordle Bulletin # 606 (February 15, 2023) –“Is there a sure thing in Wordle?”
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: 65
Average: 3.43 (aspirational target 3.5 or less) 😊
% Puzzles solved in 4 guesses or less: 95.4% (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 ~46% 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: SALSA
# Of Guesses: 4.1 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): 2 (A, L)
Typical or atypical target word? — Typical
— # of Vowels: (Typical 2); 2 (A, A)
— # of Compound/paired consonants: (Typical 1); 1 (LS)
2nd word: SONIC; Since the seed word revealed only one vowel, we had to look for the presence of at least one more vowel. We continued with the “go-to” 2nd word – SONIC. It revealed the presence of S in the first position. At this stage there were 6 possibilities – SADLY, SALAD, SALSA, SHALL, SHAWL, and SMALL. It was time to deploy the EnotE© strategy.
3rd word: SHALL; I didn’t do my usual exhaustive search for the perfect elimination word, just got lazy.
I knew that the word I chose (SHALL) will leave two possibilities uncovered (SALSA and SALAD).
If there is any one close to “sure” thing in Wordle, it is the occurence of compound-consonants. About 46% of the words have a double (ex CL CLamp) or a triple (GHT in riGHT) consonants. This biased me towards SHALL as the 1st elimination word, since it has one compound consonant (SH). I failed to recognize that another possible word (SALSA) too has one compound word.
What I was afraid of happened — SHALL did not eliminate SALAD or SALSA. I had to toss a coin.
4th word: SALAD; I lost the coin toss despite letter frequency and usage frequency pointing towards SALAD.
# Of Possible Solutions after the 1st word: Too many
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2nd word: 6
# Of Possible Solutions after the 3rd word: 2
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EnotE© (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: Deployed at the 3rd word stage, but didn’t do an exhaustive search. Unfortunately, the result was not optimal.
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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 lost the coin toss today. 😊
I must add that I was not thorough in my analysis of possible elimination words. Since luck was not in my favor, I ended up paying a one stroke penalty. Such is life!
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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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