Caveat: I am not to be confused with WordleGuru.  I am under my guru’s tutelage.
I am an average player.  My average “#of guesses required to solve a puzzle” score is pretty similar to that of New York Times’ WordleBot.

WordleGuru Grid

Wordle #449; September 11, 2022

Overall Summary: A “middle of the road” puzzle in terms of difficulty. The New York Times’ WordleBot gave it a rating of 4.3, indicating it is just slightly above the average rating of 4.1 (per Marc McLaren) ^*.  My score today was “par” (using the golf metaphor; a typical 18-hole golf course is a par-72 golf course, meaning average for the 18 holes is par-4)

The target word is not a “rare” word. The NYT’s WordleBot score is 4.3 which is above average. So, the difficulty must arise from the fact that it is not following the common characteristics as described below.

Structure: Today’s target word is not following the most common characteristics of Wordle words. It has three vowels excluding the letter Y whereas a majority of the Wordle words have two vowels. Additionally, it has one vowel repeated. Also, it doesn’t have a compound consonant (such as CH).

Quality and the impact of the first two words:   I started with my go-to seed word – ALERT. It revealed two letters A and T, though not their exact positions. As an element of my new strategy, I searched for possible answers right after the seed word. There were far too many possible answers for effective deployment of the EnotE (Eliminate not Enumerate) strategy.

So, I entered the second word of the triad ALTER/ COINS/ PUDGY. COINS did a great job in purging of the too many possibilities, leaving me with only two options BATIK and TIBIA. I looked at the frequency chart in order to decide which of the two words is more likely to be the target word. Unfortunately, both words are roughly comparable frequency wise, so it came down to a coin toss.  Today LadyLuck was not on my side.  I lost the coin toss and, as a result, my string of “sub-par” (threes) rounds was broken.

Eliminate-not-Enumerate strategy: I didn’t have to use the EnotE (Eliminate not Enumerate) strategy.

Final Thoughts: I continue to be impressed by the prowess of my favorite seed word and its companion second word (COINS).  The two words in concert continue to winnow the possibilities to just a handful words (2 words today)! WOW!  The LadyLuck was not in my corner today.

© 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