Wordle Bulletin # 585 (January 25, 2023)
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 2nd 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: 43
Average: 3.349 (aspirational target 3.5 or less) 😊
% Puzzles solved in 4 guesses or less: 97.7% (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/M
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 5th position.
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Today’s Wordle:
Target Word: MAIZE
# Of Guesses 4.3 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-
– Letter(s) with their position (s): None
– Letter(s) without their position (s): A and E
Typical or atypical target word? —A typical
— # of Vowels: (Typical 2); 3 in MAIZE
— # of Compound/paired consonants: (Typical 1); None in MAIZE
2nd word: CANES; since two vowels were revealed by the seed word and a typical Wordle target word consists of 2 vowels, I decided to not search for additional vowels. Instead, I wanted to know the exact positions of A and E; therefore, I picked CANES instead of SONIC (Canes has the same 3 consonants). only 10 possible answers after the 2nd. Word. I needed to deploy the EnotE© strategy.
3rd word: MIDGE; Could not come up with an elimination word that would eliminate definitely all but 1. So, I had to use a 2nd best word. Thankfully it worked.
# Of Possible Solutions after the seed word: Too many
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2nd word: 10
# Of Possible Solutions after the 3rd word: 1
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EnotE© (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: Deployed at the 3rd word stage. It worked as designed.
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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. Luck was in in my favor today.
Had I used my standard go-to word as the 2nd word (SONIC), I would have known three letters (A, E and I). There are only two possibilities in this case – MAIZE and WAIVE. There was a 50% chance of solving the puzzle in 3. I tried to outsmart Wordle, but it didn’t work as well. Such is life.
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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.
EnotE (Eliminate not Enumerate) is copyrighted by Ashok Gupta
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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