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 2^nd 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 5^th position.
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Today’s Wordle:
Target Word: SKIRT
# Of Guesses:  3.8 WordleBot average per Marc McLaren*; 3 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 R and T in the 4^th and 5^th positions. 😊  Checking the possibilities at this stage revealed that there are only 7 possibilities.  These are COURT, SHIRT/ SKIRT, SPORT/ SHORT/ SNORT, and SPURT. As you can see, there are two sets of orthographic neighbor words. These could make life very difficult if one is not lucky.  It was time to deploy EnotE strategy.

Second Guess: My go to 2nd word was not a good elimination word. I had to find a different word. Thankfully after some deliberation, I found it (PUNCH) and it worked. 😊

# Of Possible Solutions after the seed word: 7
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2^nd word: 1
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EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: Worked as designed (2nd guess). Today’s Wordle is an excellent example of the effectiveness of the EnotE strategy.
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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.
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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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© 2023 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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