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 relatively small sample size, it is too soon to draw any statistically valid conclusions.

No. of puzzles solved: 50
Average: 3.42 (aspirational target 3.5 or less) 😊
% Puzzles solved in 4 guesses or less: 96% (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 5^th position.
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Today’s Wordle:
Target Word: SHIRK
# Of Guesses 3.7 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): R
  –  Letter(s) without their position (s): none

Typical or atypical target word? —ATypical
— # of Vowels: (Typical 2); 1 (I)
— # of Compound/paired consonants: (Typical 1); 2 compound /paired consonants (SH, RK)

2^nd word: SONIC; Used my “go-to” second word since no vowel was revealed by the seed word. It revealed 2 letters S and I.  At these stage 3 solutions were possible – SKIRR, SHIRK and AMIRK.  SKIRR is not a regular word in my opinion.  Therefore, the answer is one of the 2 orthographic neighbor words.   Even though SHIRK was favored by frequency and position mix data, I chose SMIRK.  It backfired and I lost 1 guess in the score. I should have applied one more test – between SH and SM which one has a higher frequency.  I missed an opportunity for a 3. ☹

# Of Possible Solutions after the 1st word: too many
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2nd word: 3; 1 less common.
# Of Possible Solutions after the 2nd word: 1
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EnotE^©  (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: No need to deploy the EnotE^© Strategy.

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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 not in my corner today.
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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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