Wordle Bulletin # 481 (October 13, 2022)
Target Word: EQUAL
Typical Wordle Word Construct: 2 Vowels and one or more compound consonants (seen with >50% frequency)
Today’s Wordle Word Construct: A-Typical: 3 vowels (E, U, A)); no compound consonant
# Of Guesses: 4.1 WordleBot average per Marc McLaren*; 5 for WordleGuru
Seed Word: SOARE
Seed Word Revelations: “A and E” but not their positions
# Of Possible Solutions after the Seed Word: Too many to count!
Second Word: LATCH (in place of my regular go to word – UNITY)
Since majority of the Wordle words have 2 vowels, I chose to not test for additional vowel(s), hence the selection of LATCH as the second word; hoping to reveal the presence of four high frequency consonants. It was a mistake that I will discuss in the following sections.
Revelations from the 2nd word: One consonant (L), but not its position. Also didn’t reveal the exact position of the letter A.
# Of Possible Solutions after the Second Word: >25 ☹
Third Word: ANGEL
Revelations from the 3rd word: Given the large number of possibilities, no 5-letter single word exists to work as an elimination word. I had to come up with the second best or third best option. I chose ANGEL, hoping to confirm the positions of the two vowels – A and E, in addition to looking for the high frequency consonants N,G and L. It did confirm the letter L in the 5th position.
# Of Possible Solutions after the 3rd word: Five – EQUAL, IDEAL, MEDAL, PEDAL, and VENAL. MEDAL and PEDAL are orthographic neighbors. ☹
EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: I chose MEDIC as the elimination word to eliminate 4 of the 5 possibilities. It did the job.
Lesson Reinforced, yet again for the umpteenth time: I need to stay with the tried-and-true strategy and not act too “smart” from day to day. The go-to second word with SOARE as the seed word, is UNITY. Had I stayed with UNITY there would have been only one possibility after the second guess– EQUAL! Will I ever learn?
Final thoughts: Need to trust the system!
© 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
