Wordle Bulletin # 472 (October 4, 2022)
Target Word: BOUGH
Typical Wordle Word Construct: 2 Vowels and one or more compound consonants (seen with >50% frequency)
Today’s Wordle Word Construct: Typical; 2 vowels (O and U) and 1 compound consonant (GH)
# Of Guesses: 4.3 WordleBot average per Marc McLaren*; 5 for WordleGuru
Seed Word : SOARE
Seed Word Revelations:1 vowel (O) in its exact position
# Of Possible Solutions After the Seed Word:>25
Primary Objective for the 2nd word: Reveal the presence of additional vowels – U, I and Y since the seed word revealed the presence of only 1 vowel and majority of the Wordle words contain 2 or 3 vowels.
Second Word: UNITY
Revelations from the 2nd word: Presence of 1 vowel (U) but not its position; no additional consonants.
# Of Possible Solutions After the 2nd Word: 10 divided into three orthographic neighbor sets (BOUGH/DOUGH/COUGH, POUCH/COUCH/VOUCH, MOULD/WOULD/ COULD) and a loner (MOGUL)
3rd word: It was time to deploy the EnotE strategy. I didn’t even know the meaning of BOUGH. I had to look it up in the dictionary. I could not come up with an elimination word to eliminate 9 of the 10 possibilities, at most 8 of the 10. Since I didn’t think BOUGH is a regular word, I ignored it in coming up with the elimination word. The word I chose is CHUMP.
EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: CHUMP eliminated 8 of the 10 leaving me with a tough choice between BOUGH and DOUGH. Since I didn’t think BOUGH is a regular word, I went with DOUGH as the 4th guess expecting it to be the target word. Alas, it wasn’t to be. I ended up with a score of 5.
Final thoughts: I was told by my niece that BOUGH appears in one of the nursery rhymes (When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall and down will come baby cradle and all). I didn’t read English nursery rhyme books when I was growing up. 🙁
© 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