Comprehensive Hints/Tips to playing Wordle based on “tried and true” strategy.
The article is divided into the following sections:
I – Introduction:
I.1 – Preamble/Prologue
I.2 – Overall goal of my strategy
I.3 – Wordle Rules
I.4 – List of words already used
II -Guesses:
II.1 – First Guess/Seed Word (purpose REVELATION)
II.2 – Second Guess (purpose ELIMINATION)
II.3 – Third Guess (purpose CONFIRMATION/ELIMINATION)
III -Word finder websites
IV – Frequency of Vowels and Consonants
IV.1 – Two vowels
IV.2 – Compound consonants (example WR, NCH)
IV.3 – 2 vowels and 1 compound consonant
V -Eliminate not Enumerate (EnotE) strategy
VI – Epilogue
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I – Introduction
I.1 – Preamble /Prologue
I have been playing wordle since its beginning. Over time, I have refined my strategy. For example, now that more than 50% of the Wordles have been played, a list of words already used is of tremendous value. My present strategy takes advantage of this fact.
There are 2 modes of playing – regular and hard. I play in the regular mode (for more, please see the section below labeled “Second Guess”).
There is no right or wrong way of playing Wordle. If you are satisfied with the results your strategy is delivering, then it’s the right way of playing for you. However, if you are not satisfied, then you may consider changing some or all of the elements of your strategy. This article lists the major underpinnings of my strategy.
Further, some of us play using frequency data, others play based upon their intuition. I use the frequency data-based strategy. I am not aware of any article with definitive proof that one is better than the other. I have a friend who plays based upon his intuition and he plays in the hard mode. His average score is better than mine.
The frequency data strategy is based upon probability. For that reason, it doesn’t always work on any single Wordle. But it does work over a longer period of time, such as 30-50 Wordles. This is inherent in any statistical approach to a problem. The key thing to remember is even a low probability event can happen (e.g. rolling three 7’s in a row is possible, though not probable.) But over time it evens out and things regress to the mean.
I.2 – Overall goal of my strategy
My overall goal is to maximize the probability of achieving low scores. Since variation is built into the game, I have to look at the strategies from a statistical point of view. I can’t be deterred by unfavorable scores in the short-term. Over the longer term, the score regresses to the mean. I will talk about the importance of seed words soon. Randomly changing the seed word introduces “noise” in the system and the “mean” of the underlying probability distribution keeps changing. Therefore, the frequency-based approach doesn’t work as well.
Your goal may be to solve it quickly without any consideration for the score (i.e. number of guesses). There is nothing wrong with this approach.
I.3 – Wordle rules
Wordle does not use plural words ending in the letter S. Plurals such as CIRRI (for CIRRUS) are OK.
Wordle does not use the past tense of verbs ending in the letters ED. Past tense such as THREW (for THROW) are OK.
Past tense of verbs ending in ED that are used as adjective are OK. Example FRIED, which is the past tense of the verb FRY, can be used as an adjective, such as FRIED egg.
Words that are not past tense of verbs but end in ED are OK, such as TWEED, BLEED, STEED, UNFED. Interestingly enough, BLEED is a verb in the present tense!
Wordle does not repeat words. This means that once a word has been used by Wordle, it won’t be used again.
I.4 – List of words already used
Since Wordle does not repeat words, and the fact that more than 1,150 Wordle puzzle games have already been played (more than 50% out of 2,309), it’s useful to have a list of words already used. These words you can cross out from the list of possible words, thereby reducing the size of the list of possible words. You can find such a list on the following website:
Past Wordle answers – all solutions so far, alphabetical and by date | TechRadar
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II – Guesses
II.1 -First Guess/Seed Word (purpose REVELATION)
The purpose of the seed word is to reveal as many letters in the target word as possible.
You need to choose an effective seed word, i.e. one likely to reveal the maximum number of letters in the target word. An effective seed word has high frequency vowels and high frequency consonants. Per Oxford English Dictionary the top letters, frequency wise, for 5 letter words (about 8,600) are as follows- S, E, A, O, R, I, L, T, N, D – 4 vowels and 6 consonants. One can go into a finer detail when selecting a seed word, such as frequencies of letters in the five positions respectively. While C doesn’t appear in the above list, it is the second highest frequency letter in the first position, just after S.
You may find many websites that list effective seed words. My favorite seed words are SOARE, CRANE, STARE, and STALE. Some people prefer three vowels in the seed word (SOARE), whereas others prefer three consonants (CRANE). I am not a fan of words with 4 vowels (ADIEU or AUDIO).
I use the same seed word for at least 100 wordles in a row. In my opinion, switching back and forth among different seed words adds one more layer of statistical variability.
II.2 – Second Guess (purpose ELIMINATION)
I select the second word based upon what has been revealed by the seed word. I have developed a list of letters and associated frequencies based on what I learn from the seed word. I have such lists for three seed words – CRANE, SOARE and STARE. You may not have access to such a list. In that case, you can use the generic list for high frequency letters. Such a list based on the actual Wordle words through Wordle # 1150 is available at the following URL:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/6/folders/1j_ccVqGhsDjaohMlm4jC7g1z8wot4Cya
If you play in the hard mode, then you have to use the letters revealed by the seed word in your second guess. You must use the “green” letters, in the same positions but the “yellow” letters can be used in any position. I play in the regular mode and, therefore, have a lot more freedom in selecting the letters for the second guess. I have dubbed my strategy at this stage as “EnotE” (Eliminate, not, Enumerate). I will discuss this in the later section.
Now that more than half of the Wordles have been played, many times I get lucky and find that only a “handful” possibilities exist after the second guess (less than 6-7 after excluding the words previously used). In such instances, I bypass the second guess step and treat the second guess as if it is the third guess.
II.3 – Third Guess (purpose CONFIRMATION/ELIMINATION)
After playing the second guess, I develop a list of all possibilities based on the first two guesses. As I will discuss in the following section, you can select the universe of possible words in one of two ways – the Oxford English Dictionary 5 letter words (about 8,600) or Wordle target words (2,309).
Every so often I get lucky and there is only one possibility left after the first two guesses. But in the majority of the cases there are 3 or more possibilities. At this point if you are a risk taker, you are likely to want to guess the answer based on your gutfeel. There is nothing wrong with this approach, as long as you realize that you may get “trapped” in enumeration hell! By this I mean, your next guess may not be the answer either, leading you to try for the fourth time.
I prefer to deploy the EnotE strategy, to be discussed later. I prefer to use one of the possibilities as the elimination word, if it makes sense.
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III – Word finder websites
Word finder websites reduce the drudgery of work. For example, you can ask a particular word finder website (Word Finder for Scrabble and Words with Friends) for all the 5 letter words containing a given set of 5 or more letters. One can produce such a list without using the website, but it will take much longer.
I use word finder websites. There are two opposing views towards the use of the word finder websites. One camp abhors their usage stating that it defeats the intent of the game. Others claim using such websites is not any different than using a dictionary while playing crosswords. I fall in the latter camp. The websites I use predominantly give me a list of all possible words, given what I have learned through the guesses already made. My two favorite websites are as follows:
Website 1 The Ultimate Word Finder & Unscrambler – Wordle Helper & Cheats (wordhippo.com)
Website 2 Wordle Solver – Get Help On Today’s Wordle Without Cheating (yourdictionary.com)
Recently I came to know of a word finder website that limits possible words to the 2,309 Wordle words only as opposed to more than 8,600 5-letter words per Oxford English Dictionary. I started using it only recently. Clearly this website makes a game much easier to play since the list of possible words is much shorter. It is up to you to decide which, if any, of the word finder websites you would like to use. This website is Wordle Solver – Daily Wordle Answer Finder (wordunscrambler.net)
None of the websites that I am aware of excludes Wordle words already used from the list of possible words. This step has to be done manually. Also, the same is true of the position of the yellow letters. By this I mean, if the letter in the second position is L and the cell is Yellow, websites may list BLEED as a possibility. You have to discount such words manually.
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IV – Frequency of Vowels and Consonants
IV.1 – Two vowels
60% of Wordle words have two vowels (not counting Y as a vowel); 64% counting Y as a vowel. Again, since frequency represents probability, it’s possible to have runs of words without two vowels. This does not violate the basic principle.
IV.2 – Compound consonants
Based upon the analysis of 1,100 plus Wordle games, I have found that 60% of the time compound consonants (such as SP or NCH) are present in Wordle words. Some words have two sets of compound consonants (such as WREST). Since frequency represents probability, it’s possible to have runs of words without compound consonants. This does not violate the basic principle.
IV.3 – Two vowels and one compound consonant
46% of Wordle words have two vowels and one compound consonant.
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V – Eliminate not Enumerate (EnotE) strategy
This strategy works in regular mode predominantly. Let’s consider the following list of orthographic neighbor words – FLING, BLING, CLING, and SLING. You have to choose only the first letter; the rest have been confirmed. You can choose any one of the four and get lucky 25% of the time. At the other extreme you may have to make 4 guesses to get to the answer. This is the enumeration strategy. Under such a strategy your score from this guess could be 1 (extremely lucky) or 2 or 3 or 4 (extremely unlucky).
Instead, if you choose SCABS as an example, you will gain enough information to solve the puzzle in the next guess. This is the elimination strategy.
To summarize, the elimination strategy guarantees that you will need only two guesses. The enumeration strategy outcome could be 1,2,3 or 4 guesses. The choice comes down to your appetite for “risk”.
A comment re the relevance of the EnotE strategy in the Hard Mode is warranted. We are able to choose SCABS if we are playing in the Regular Mode, but not if we are playing in the Hard Mode. In the Hard Mode you are forced to enumerate, since you must use LING in the 2nd through 5th position.
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VI – Epilogue
With more than 1,100 Wordles already played, the frequency distributions are pretty much set, as long as the number of data points are “large” enough. As an example, the frequency of the number of vowels (1, 2 or 3) should not vary much as new Wordles are added to the sample. But the frequency of a particular consonant, especially low frequency consonant (such as J or Z), could vary significantly as new Wordles are added.
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