Wordle Bulletin # 471 (October 3, 2022)
Target Word: STING
Typical Wordle Word Construct: 2 Vowels and one or more compound consonants (seen with >50% frequency)
Today’s Wordle Word Construct: Atypical; 1 vowel (I) and 2 compound consonants (ST and NG)
# Of Guesses: 3.9 WordleBot average per Marc McLaren*; 5 for WordleGuru
Seed Word: SOARE
Seed Word Revelations: 1 consonant (S) in its exact positions
# Of Possible Solutions After the Seed Word:>25
Second Word: UNITY (The seed word didn’t reveal the presence of any vowel and majority of the Wordle words contain 2 or 3 vowels)
Primary Objective for the 2nd word: Reveal the presence of vowels – U, I and Y
Revelations from the 2nd word: Presence of 1 vowel (I) in the 3rd position; and 2 consonants (N and T) but not their exact positions
# Of Possible Solutions After the 2nd Word: Four – STINK, STING, STINT, and SKINT. SKINT is not a common word, so only the first three. These three happen to be orthographic neighbors, which spells potential trouble.
3rd word: It was time to deploy the EnotE strategy. But I got greedy and decided to try my luck instead. I relied on the frequency distribution of the last three letters of the orthographic neighbors which happen to be T, K and G in that order. I entered enumeration hell today. I did what I advise Wordle players to not do.
EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: I should have used KINGS as the elimination word for the third guess. It would have eliminated STINT and STINK leaving only STING as the possibility. Instead of a score of 5, I’d have had a score of 4 – a penalty of 1 for not using the EOE strategy.
Lesson Reinforced: Frequency distribution data, being probability based, does not always work.
Final thoughts: I am only human, prone to greed! Wordle is a game of luck and skill. Only one of the two doesn’t work. Unluckily for me, frequency distribution data didn’t help. LadyLuck was not smiling on me. WordleGod acted fiendishly.
© 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: