Today’s Wordle provided an opportunity to showcase the power of the EnotE strategy.
Key : [orthographic neighbor words]

Target Word: SPADE
Typical Wordle Word Construct: 2 Vowels and one or more compound consonants (seen with >50% frequency)
Today’s Wordle Word Construct: Typical; 2 vowels (A, E);  1 compound consonant (SP)
# Of Guesses: 3.6 WordleBot average per Marc McLaren*; 3 for WordleGuru

Seed Word: SOARE
Seed Word Revelations: S, A, and E in their exact positions 😊😊
# Of Possible Solutions after the Seed Word: 23 of which 4 are not regular words.  The list of the 19 is available at the end of this section.  To make things interesting (!) there are several sets of orthographic neighbor words. The worst one is SHAVE, SHAPE, SHADE, SHAKE, SHALE, and SHAME

It was time to deploy the EnotE strategy. I consulted the frequency data for the second and fourth letters.  I also looked at the most frequent two letter openings beginning with S (ST, SH, SP), and two letter endings with the last letter being E (SE, TE and GE).

The elimination word I chose based upon these data is PATCH.

Second Word: PATCH
Revelations from the 2^nd word: 2 consonants (P, A) but not their positions
# Of Possible Solutions after the Second Word:1 – SPADE – the target word.  Life can’t be any better.

EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: It was a bit tricky to come up with a single word to eliminate 18 of the 19 possibilities. So, it came down to picking one that had the best chance of eliminating the greatest number of possibilities.  I narrowed the choice to PATCH.  Miracles do happen! It did the job.

Final thoughts: Wordle outcome has a lot to do with luck, not just skill. It’s clear that LadyLuck was on my side despite the fact WordleGod acted fiendishly (too many sets of orthographic neighbor words).

© 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

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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. My work in this area can be found on my website, Budding Poets Corner – Poet Laureates of Tomorrow