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: 22
Average: 3.41 (aspirational target 3.5)
% Puzzles solved in 4 guesses or less; 95% (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: MOLAR
# Of Guesses:  4 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 A, L and R, but not their positions.

Second Guess: My “go-to” 2nd word (SONIC) revealed the consonant O in the 2nd position.   After the second word there were four possibilities – MORAL, MOLAR, ROYAL, and POLAR.

Third Guess: I chose one of the possible words as an elimination word (MORAL).  Unlucky for me this was not the target word.  But it led me to the target word.

# Of Possible Solutions after the seed word: too many
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2^nd word: 4
# Of Possible Solutions after the 3rd word: 1

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EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: Worked as designed (3^rd guess)
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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.

I use WordHippo to squeeze out all the possibilities for a given set of letters. WordHippo failed me again today. It didn’t include at least one of the possibilities (MOLAR). Had I seen this word, I would have used it as my elimination word instead of MORAL (based on frequency data). I would have solved the puzzle in 3. This has happened to me before and I am cognizant of it but still I rushed.  I should have enumerated all possibilities manually with pen and paper (this is the way I used to play before I started using WordHippo).

My use of WordHippo has been questioned. To me it is a productivity tool. It doesn’t do anything more than what my manual enumeration process did. We as a society welcome productivity tools.

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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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