Wordle bulletin – Week of November 20, ‘23 (11/20-11/26) (#884-#890)
Wordle #890 (November 26, 2023)
NY Times WordleBot average score: 3.3
Today’s tactics: The seed word was reasonably effective since it revealed S in the first position. For the second guess, I chose OCULI as the DiscY© word (Discovery word). It narrowed the choice to two words- SOLID and SPOIL. Based on the frequency data, I chose SOLID. Luckily it worked. 😊
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Wordle #889 (November 25, 2023)
NY Times WordleBot average score: 3.7
Today’s tactics: The seed word was moderately effective. It revealed the presence of E in the fifth spot. At this point there were 106 possibilities. The second word’s objective was to discover other letters. I chose BLIND as the 2nd word. This too was only moderately effective, since it still left me with three possibilities – CHIDE, GUIDE, and OXIDE. The debate in my mind was between GUIDE and OXIDE. Wordle likes to use words with five very low frequency consonants quite often, roughly once every eight games. Even though in the last 20 games they have used the low frequency consonants 4 times, I thought OXIDE would be the target word today, but it turned out to be not the case. ☹
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Wordle #888 (November 24, 2023)
NY Times WordleBot average score: 3.7
Today’s tactics: The seed word revealed the presence of two consonants – T and R but no vowels. At this stage, about 50 or so possibilities. The goal of the second word was to discover the exact positions of T and R and search for additional letters. Based on the frequency of letters when T and R are present but A and E are absent, I chose FROTH as the second guess. It narrowed the choices to two – THROW and THROB. Since W has a higher probability to appear in the fifth position than B, I chose W. Luckily it worked. 😊
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Wordle #887 (November 23, 2023)
NY Times WordleBot average score: 3.8
Today’s tactics: the seed word was not very effective since it revealed only one letter(E) but not its position. The goal of the second word was to discover the position of E and additional letters. I chose ELOIN as that word. It eliminated all but two words- BEGUN AND QUEEN. Since Wordle doesn’t use past tense of verbs there was only one possibility. 😊
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Wordle #886 (November 22, 2023)
NY Times WordleBot average score: 4.2
Today’s tactics: today’s seed word was not very effective since it revealed only the presence of one vowel (E) but not it’s position. The objective of the second guess was to try to confirm the position of E and search for additional letters. The word I chose – OILED. OILED too was not very effective since it left me with five possibilities – LIVEN, LIKEN, LINEN, LIBEL and PIXEL. I had to deploy the EnotE© strategy using the word LIBEL. It narrowed the choice to only one.😊
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Wordle #885 (November 21, 2023)
NY Times WordleBot average score: 3.4
Tactics for today’s wordle: Since, the seed word revealed only one vowel, the priority for the second guess was to search for additional vowels and consonants. Taking into account the fact that the letter A was revealed in the third position, I looked for high frequency letters and chose CLINK as the second word. It did the job. Only one possibility.😊
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Wordle #884 (November 20, 2023)
NY Times WordleBot average score: 3.8
Today’s tactics: the seed word revealed only one letter – A. The objective of the second guess was to try to confirm the position of A and search for other high frequency consonants/ vowels. Chose CLOAK as the second guess. At this stage, five possibilities – CABIN, CANDY, CADDY, CANNY, and CABBY. Since the letter Y in the fifth position is a high frequency occurrence, I had four options. Of the four options, I chose CANDY as the third guess based upon my gut feel related to usage. Luckily it worked.
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Useful facts:
© 2023 Ashok Gupta All rights reserved.
EnotE (Eliminate not Enumerate) is copyrighted by Ashok Gupta.
PCon (Position Confirmation word) is copyrighted by Ashok Gupta.
DiscY (Discovery word) is copyrighted by Ashok Gupta.
Wordle and WordleBot are trademarks owned by the New York Times.
*The NYT Wordle players average score I refer to is as of sometime between 7:00 AM and 8:00 AM pacific coast time (USA).
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Useful facts:
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Top 11 consonants in terms of frequency of use (in any of the 5 positions): R T L S N C H P D G M
Rank order of the 6 vowels (including Y) in terms of frequency of use (in any of the 5 positions): E A O I U Y
Typical Wordle word: 2 vowels (counting Y as the sixth vowel), 1 compound (ex KN)/paired consonant (ex NN)
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Strategy:
Please visit the following URL. Thank you.
Strategy (as of July 1, 2023) – Wordle Guru
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