Wordle bulletin – Week of November 13, ‘23 (11/13-11/19) (#877-#883)
Wordle #883 (November 19, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 4.4
Triad: STARE/COLIN/PUDGY
Today’s tactics: the seed word revealed only one letter (E in the fifth position). At this point in time there were more than 100 possible words. The second guess has the task of eliminating as many of these possibilities as feasible. In order to accomplish this goal, the word should include high frequency consonants and possibly additional vowels, with E in the fifth position. That’s how I came up with the word LINGO as the second guess. After these two words, only six possibilities remained – QUEUE, JUICE, EMCEE, EDUCE, EXUDE, and PEEVE.
I have noticed that Wordle tends to use low frequency letters (5 of them as a group – J, Q, V, X, and Z) on average once every 8 games. Three of the five are present in today’s 6 possibilities. I had to select among the three words for the third guess. The last Wordle to use one of these five letters was #873. That was 10 days ago. Among Q, X and V, Q has the lowest frequency. Therefore, I went with the word QUEUE as the third guess. Luckily the logic worked today. A lucky day since we are speaking of probabilistic outcomes.
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Wordle #882 (November 18, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 3.5
Triad: STARE/COLIN/PUDGY
Tactics for today’s wordle: After the seed word, chose a non-triad word (TOUCH) that included the only letter revealed by the seed word (T). Three possibilities after the second guess – TIGHT, THING and THINK. TIGHT and THING have been used before so only one possibility left – THINK.
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Wordle #881 (November 17, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 3.6
Triad: STARE/COLIN/PUDGY
Tactics for today’s Wordle: after the seed word, I chose to deploy the PCon© strategy instead of the EOE strategy by choosing TAROT as the 2nd guess. The move proved to be effective as after the second guess there was only one possibility.
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Wordle #880 (November 16, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 3.5
Triad: STARE/COLIN/PUDGY
Tactics for today: after the seed word, there were 16 possibilities. Needed to eliminate as many as possible and at the same time try to determine the exact locations of the letters R, S and T. I chose WORST as the elimination word. it was not that effective since it still left me with four possibilities – TRUST, TRYST, CRUST and BURST. Based on Usage data, I chose TRUST as the third guess and luckily it worked.
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Wordle #879 (November 15, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 3.9
Triad: STARE/COLIN/PUDGY
Tactics for today: the seed word didn’t reveal any vowel. So the second guess had to reveal one or two waffles and other high frequency consonants. I chose OCULI as the second guess. It was partially effective since it still left me with six possibilities- SIXTY, SIXTH, SWIFT, SMITH, SHIFT, SIGHT. My gut feel was pretty sure that the answer today includes the rarely used letter, X. I chose. SIXTY since it ended on why which is a high frequency letter in the fifth position. My gut feel was proven wrong, but it worked as a good elimination word and narrowed the option to just one.
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Wordle #878 (November 14, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 4.9
Triad: STARE/COLIN/PUDGY
Today’s tactics: After the seed word, there were 24 possibilities. I used a non-triad word as the second guess to trim the possibilities. This narrowed the choice to six words- SNAKY, SAUCY, SASSY, SANDY, SAVVY, and SAVOY. Needed to deploy the EnotE© strategy. Chose DUSKY as the elimination word. It did the job.
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Wordle #877 (November 13, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 3.8
Triad: STARE/COLIN/PUDGY
Today’s tactics: seed word not very effective today, more than 100 solutions. I chose a non-triad second word to try to narrow down the choices and at the same time try to confirm the positions of the letters E&R. The word I chose is DOPER; it reduced the possibilities to 10 – still very high. Needed to deploy the EnotE© strategy. I chose BEGIN as the elimination word. It did the job.
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Useful facts:
© 2023 Ashok Gupta All rights reserved.
EnotE (Eliminate not Enumerate) is copyrighted by Ashok Gupta.
PCon (Position Confirmation) is copyrighted by Ashok Gupta.
Wordle and WordleBot are trademarks owned by the New York Times.
*The WordleBot 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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