Wordle Bulletin # 561 (January 1, 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: 23
Average: 3.39 (aspirational target 3.5)
% Puzzles solved in 4 guesses or less; 95.7% (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
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: WHINE
# 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: Presence of E but not its position.
Second Guess: My “go-to” 2nd word (SONIC) revealed the consonant N and vowel I,but not their positions.. After the second word there were 11 possibilities. I had to come with an effective elimination word. I could not think of one that would eliminate 10 of the11. I had to go for a second best such word.
Third Guess: I chose GIBED as the elimination word. It eliminated 8 of the 11, leaving me with three – WHINE, KNIFE and VEINY. I discounted VEINY since I didn’t think it was used much. The choice between the remaining two, i.e WHINE and KNIFE was based on frequency data. Luckily today frequency data worked.
# Of Possible Solutions after the seed word: too many
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2nd word: 11
# Of Possible Solutions after the 3rd word: 3
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EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: Worked as designed (3rd guess). __________________________________________________________________________________________________
Final thoughts: Wordle is a game of luck and skill. Sometimes luck favors the game and sometimes it favors the player. Today luck was on my side.
I use WordHippo to squeeze out all the possibilities for a given set of letters. Since WordHippo had failed me a few time, I don’t rely on it 100%. I employ “manual enumeration methodology” in conjunction with WordHippo.
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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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