Wordle Bulletin – Wordle #435 (August 28, 2022)
Caveat: I am not to be confused with WordleGuru. I am an average player. My average “#of guesses required to solve a puzzle” score is pretty similar to that of New York Times’ WordleBot.
WordleGuru Grid
Wordle #435; August 28, 2022
Overall Summary
Today’s Wordle proved to be a tough one for WordleGuru, requiring 5 guesses. The WordleBot score for today’s puzzle is 4.7.
The 10-day moving averages for WordleBot, and I are 4.1 and 3.7 respectively. The 30-day moving averages for WordleBot, and I are 4.2 and 3.9 respectively. Today’s scores represent “regression to the mean” for both WordleBot and I.
Guesses
The first guess was from my go to triad of ALERT/SONIC/PUDGY. ALERT revealed the presence of two vowels A and E but no consonants.
Now I had a decision to make for the second guess. Since words with three vowels (counting Y as the 6th vowel) represent only ¼ of words in Wordle, I didn’t want to search for the remaining four vowels i.e., I, O, U and Y. I also wanted to reveal the exact positions of A and E. I selected MEANS as the second word. M, N, and S are high frequency consonants (anywhere in the word). Disappointingly I didn’t attain the objective behind the selection of MEANS. MEANS didn’t reveal the exact positions of A or E. (please see the section below labeled “Retrospective look with the help of the WordleGuru rear view mirror”
Interestingly, the second word of the triad, i.e., SONIC would have ruled out the vowel I and the consonants S and C. It is hard to tell without more analysis if that would have been a better choice.
After the first two guesses, I had about 25 possibilities. These possible words included three of the four remaining vowels (there was no O in the possibilities.) In terms of consonants, the possibilities included 11 consonants (B, C, D, F, G, H, K, P, V, W and Z). So, I had to find a word that would eliminate the maximum number from the 25 possibilities. I chose BICEP. BICEP proved to be a good choice, since it eliminated all but four possibilities. These four were GAFFE, GAUGE, GAUZE, and VAGUE.
From a probability perspective GAUGE was far ahead of the rest. That became my number four guess. Should GAUGE not be the answer, it was set to eliminate three of the four, including itself, thereby leaving us with the answer.
Disappointingly, GAUGE was not the answer. The answer was GAUZE. GAUZE fell in the middle of the four words, probability wise.
Lesson reinforced:
A probability-based approach does not always lead to the answer with the highest probability. That’s just the way a probability-based methodology works. Over a large enough sample, a probability-based methodology comes out ahead of the rest.
Today we demonstrated the power of the EnotE (Eliminate not Enumerate) strategy.
Wordle is a game of luck and skill. One alone does not work most of the time. The same fact was in full view once again today. The skill was evident in the use of the EnotE strategy. But lady luck was not in my favor today.
Close look with the help of the WordleGuru Microscope
Today’s word (GAUZE) uses a very low frequency letter (Z). Its frequencies are 0.3% (anywhere) and 0.9% (fourth position). Secondly the frequency of three vowels in one word is about 10%. These two facts make GAUZE a hard puzzle to solve.
Retrospective look with the help of the WordleGuru rear view mirror
My second guess was MEANS. The idea was to locate the exact positions of the two vowels – E and A. The vowel E appears most frequently in the in the 4th and 5th positions with frequencies of 25% and 37% respectively. The vowel A appears most frequently in the in the 2nd and 3rd positions with frequencies of 27% and 30% respectively.
I should have looked for a word with these facts in mind. MANSE is one such word. MANSE’s anagram NAMES is also a good choice. MANSE would have pointed the exact positions of both A and E. NAMES on the other hand would have pointed the position of A only. Both these are better than what MEANS was able to pinpoint.
Going one step further, the frequencies of M in the 1st position and N in the 3rd position (as in MANSE) are 5.0% and 5.3% respectively. Compare this with the frequencies of N in the 1st position and M in the 3rd position (as in NAMES) are 1.4% and 2.3% respectively. This says that MANSE is a better choice. Interestingly, both MANSE and NAMES are anagrams of MEANS!!
Lesson learned
One should consider anagrams of the word you have selected as an elimination word. This had happened to me once before. I clearly forgot the lesson!
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