Wordle Bulletin – Week of June 26, 2023 (#737-#743)
Effective June 26, 2023, I have changed the structure of the Bulletin to 1) eliminate daily redundancies and 2) reduce the time it takes me to post the Bulletins.
From now on, a Bulletin will span one whole week beginning with Monday and ending on the following Sunday.
Each day, I will add the Wordle grid of that day to this weekly Bulletin.
The most current Bulletin will be at the top.
Towards the end of the post, I describe my strategy.
This section will remain static from week to week, unless there is a misstatement, or I learn something new. In that case I will put up a message at the beginning.
I would appreciate your feedback, positive as well as negative.
Ashok Gupta
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Wordle # 743 (July 2, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 4.3 – Triad: ALTER/SONIC/PUDGY
Tactics for today’s Wordle: Different 2nd word (not from the triad) due to no revelations by the seed word; after 2nd word, 3 possibilities (common words); frequency data led to the target word. It worked (element of luck today!).
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Wordle # 742 (July 1, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 4.0 – Triad: ALTER/SONIC/PUDGY
Tactics for today’s Wordle: seed word – 5 possibilities; opportunity to deploy the EnotE© strategy after the seed word; instead of using the 2nd word of the triad, selected a more effective elimination word – POSED; it worked.
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Wordle # 741 (June 30, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 4.0* – Triad: ALTER/SONIC/PUDGY
Tactics for today’s Wordle: 1st 2 words from the triad; 7 possibilities; deployed the EnotE© strategy (WIMPY is the chosen elimination word); it worked.
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Wordle # 740 (June 29, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 4.0* – Triad: ALTER/SONIC/PUDGY
Tactics for today’s Wordle: 1st 2 words from the triad; 4 possibilities; deployed the EnotE© strategy (MINED is the chosen elimination word); it worked.
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Wordle # 739 (June 28, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 3.9* – Triad: ALTER/SONIC/PUDGY
Tactics for today’s Wordle: 1st 2 words from the triad; 2 possibilities; used frequency data to select between the two possibilities.
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Wordle # 738 (June 27, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 3.4* – Triad: ALTER/SONIC/PUDGY
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Wordle # 737 (June 26, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 3.9* – Triad: ALTER/SONIC/PUDGY
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*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
© 2023 Ashok Gupta All rights reserved.
EnotE (Eliminate not Enumerate) is copyrighted by Ashok Gupta
Wordle and WordleBot are trademarks owned by the New York Times.
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Strategy
Objective:
- Average score of 3.5
- % Solve rate -100%
- % 5 or 6 – less than 5%
I use an analytical approach, not ad-hoc. My approach is highly unlikely to result in a score of 2. My scores are mostly 3’s and 4’s.
Word Finder Apps
I get help from “word finder apps (WFA). This is a controversial strategy. Some of my colleagues abhor the use of WFAs, but I don’t. To me it is like using a dictionary or a thesaurus while solving crossword puzzles. The most prominent WFA for me is WordHippo. Its URL is shown below:
The Ultimate Word Finder & Unscrambler – Wordle Helper & Cheats (wordhippo.com)
WFA helps me in formulating an elimination word.
Seed word
I have played with several different seed words. For each seed word, I have defined two other words that make a triad. The purpose of a triad is to cover most of the high frequency consonants and the vowels in frequency ranking, beginning with the highest frequency consonants and vowels. So, a seed word has 2 or 3 highest frequency vowels and 3 or 2 highest frequency consonants.
For about a month or so I have been using ALTER as the seed word. The other two words that go with ALTER to make a triad are SONIC and PUDGY.
The top 10 to 12 consonants are as follows:
R T L S N C H P D G M
The frequency-based ranking of the vowels is as follows:
E A O I U Y
The composition of the three words in the triad reflects the hierarchy described above.
These frequency data are based on actual Wordle words from Wordle #1 to Wordle #735.
Wordle Word Characteristics:
Most of the Wordle words have two vowels (counting Y as the 6th vowel) and one compound consonant/paired consonant (example KN or NN).
Second Word
In the case the seed word reveals 2 vowels, I don’t search for additional vowels. In that case my second word is not SONIC. The actual second word depends on what has been revealed by the seed word. If the revelation by the seed word also confirms the position(s) then I prefer to not include that vowel in the second word. However, if we don’t know the exact position(s) of the vowel(s), I may include the vowel(s) in the second word, but not in the same positions as in the seed word in order to reveal their exact position(s).
One such word is CHASE. This word is extremely useful if we know that the vowels A and E exist in the Wordle’s word, but we don’t know their positions. In that case, by using CHASE we are trying to unearth the positions of the two vowels and at the same time trying to see if the three high frequency consonants (C, H and S) are present in the Wordle word.
Third Word
The specific third word is even more dependent upon what we learn from the first two words. I end up using the 3rd word of the triad infrequently. In many cases it is the target word. In other cases, it is an elimination word. I won’t go into any more detail about the third word.
Eliminate not Enumerate (EnotE) strategy
<to be continued>