Wordle Bulletin # 544 (December 15, 2022)
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.
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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: RIVAL
# Of Guesses: 3.9 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: 1 vowel (A) , and 2 consonant (L, R), but not their exact positions.
Second Guess: The choice of the second guess depends on the learning from the seed word. Given that we only revealed one vowel and most of Wordle words contain 2 vowels, we needed to find at least one more vowel. Also, we needed to find possibly 1 more consonant since 2 were revealed by the seed word.
I did not choose my “go-to” 2nd word – SONIC. Instead, I chose MUSIC (U/S in place of O/N) since in the list of possibilities, the presence of O and N was minimal. MUSIC was effective in narrowing down the possibilities to just two – VIRAL and RIVAL. These 2 words are in the same vein as orthographic neighbor words.
Third Guess: I consulted the frequency charts. VIRAL had a slight edge over RIVAL. I could not think of any other angle for the preference between the two words. Unfortunately, the strategy didn’t work today. ☹
# Of Possible Solutions after the seed word: about 25
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2nd word: two –VIRAL, and RIVAL.
# Of Possible Solutions after the 3rd word: One – the target word RIVAL
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EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: Didn’t need it; needed frequency data.
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Final thoughts: Wordle is a game of luck and skill. Sometimes luck favors the game and some time it favors the player. Today wasn’t my turn. One has to be lucky in life and in games like this to succeed. Finally after a run of 6, my streak of 3s broke today.
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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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