Wordle # 757 (July 16, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 3.9 – Triad: ALTER/SONIC/PUDGY

Tactics for today’s Wordle:  After two words, two possibilities – TOPAZ, and TODAY. Interestingly in the Jumble puzzle for July 15, TOPAZ was one of the scrambled words. So, I thought this is a good omen and I went with TOPAZ, and it proved to be the right answer. 😊

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Wordle # 756 (July 15, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 4.0  – Triad: ALTER/SONIC/PUDGY

Tactics for today’s Wordle:  After the 2 words from the triad only 1 possible answer! 😊

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Wordle # 755 (July 14, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 3.7   – Triad: SLATE/ORNIC/PUDGY

Tactics for today’s Wordle:  The seed word revealed only 1 vowel.  Needed to search for additional vowels. Hence a different 2^nd word (CURIO with 3 vowels) instead of the 2^nd word from the triad (ORNIC). After 2 words, 12 possibilities.  Deployed the EnotE© strategy with DEIGN as the elimination word.  It did the job.  😊

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Wordle # 754 (July 13, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 3.8   – Triad: SLATE/ORNIC/PUDGY

Tactics for today’s Wordle:  Changed the seed word to SLATE (from ALERT).  SLATE is one of the preferred seed words for NYT’s WordleBot. It revealed 2 vowels.  Hence a different 2^nd word (with only 1 vowel) than the 2^nd word from the triad (ORNIC – 2 vowels). After 2 words, 4 possibilities.  Deployed the EnotE© strategy using 1 of the 4 possibilities.  Luckily for me, it turned out to be the target word. 😊

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Wordle # 753 (July 12, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 3.8* – Triad: ALTER/SONIC/PUDGY

Tactics for today’s Wordle:  The seed word didn’t reveal any vowel.  Hence a different 2^nd word than the 2^nd word from the triad. After 2 words, 7 possibilities.  Deployed the EnotE© strategy which led to the target word.

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Wordle # 752 (July 11, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score:  3.3  – Triad: ALTER/SONIC/PUDGY

Tactics for today’s Wordle:  After the seed word, 17 possibilities. Since the seed word had already revealed two vowels, I didn’t use the 2^nd word of the triad (SONIC). Instead I chose a different word – SHADE. SHADE had the potential to confirm the positions of A and E; disappointingly it didn’t. Three possibilities at this stage.  Chose the third guess based on frequency. Luckily it worked.  😊😊😊

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Wordle # 751 (July 10, 2023) – NY Times WordleBot score: 4.6*  – Triad: ALTER/SONIC/PUDGY

Tactics for today’s Wordle:  After the first two words 10+ possibilities.  Chose GODLY as an elimination word. Six possibilities remained.  Used frequency and mix in first position data to select FOLLY.  Luckily it worked!  😊😊😊

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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 is as of sometime between 7:00 AM and 8:00 AM pacific coast time (USA).

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Useful facts:
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Top 11 consonants in terms of frequency of use (in any of the 5 positions): R T L S N C H P D G M
Rank order of the 6 vowels (including Y) in terms of frequency of use (in any of the 5 positions): E A O I U Y
Typical Wordle word: 2 vowels (counting Y as the sixth vowel), 1 compound (ex KN)/paired consonant (ex NN)
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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 6^th 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 3^rd 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>