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: 23
Average: 3.39 (aspirational target 3.5)
% Puzzles solved in 4 guesses or less; 95.7% (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
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: LAYER
# Of Guesses:  4.4 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: It revealed the presence of the letters A, L, E and R but not their exact positions.  12 possible solutions at this stage.  Time to deploy EnotE strategy.

Second Guess: FANGS; my go to 2nd word (SONIC) was not a good elimination word in this case. I had to find a different word.  I picked FANGS as an elimination word.  It had mixed success since it could not eliminate 3 possibilities – EARLY, LAYER and RAVEL.  I had to deploy EnotE strategy for the second time.

Third Guess: EARLY; I selected EARLY as the elimination word out of the three based on frequency.  Unfortunately for me, today frequency-based decision turned out to be a wrong one.

# Of Possible Solutions after the seed word: 12
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2^nd word: 3
# Of Possible Solutions after the 3^rd  word: 1

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EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: Did not work as effectively as I was hoping – had to deploy two times.
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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.  Today luck was not on my side.  ☹

I learned a new lesson.  When choosing an elimination word, keep track of the times a particular letter appears in the possible answers.  I should have included Y in today’s elimination word, since three different possible words included a Y.

Live and learn!
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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.
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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