Wordle Bulletin # 463 (September 25, 2022)
Prolog: The strategy I employ is designed to ensure I solve the puzzle for sure, preferably in 5 guesses or less. This strategy will rarely solve the puzzle in 3 guesses or less.
Target Word: ADMIT
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 and E) and 1 compound consonant (GR)
Difficulty: “Today’s Wordle answer is another easy one.” per Marc McLaren*; “Nothing out of the ordinary” per WordleGuru
# Of Guesses: Between 3 and 4 per Marc McLaren* (The Exact number not available)
4 for WordleGuru
Average Guesses introduction-to-date for the WordleBot* community: 4.1
Average Guesses Jan ’22-to-date for WordleGuru: 3.75 (aspirational goal is 3.5)
Seed Word & the triad (all 3 words in a triad have non-overlapping and high frequency letters): SOARE (SOARE/CULTY/NYMPH)**
Seed Word Revelations: 1 letter (A) but not its position
# Of Possible Solutions After the Seed Word: >25
Second Word: UNITY (decided to not use the second word of the triad, since the seed word revealed the presence of only 1 vowel and majority of the Wordle words contain 2 or 3 vowels)
Objectives for the 2nd word: Reveal the presence of two high frequency consonants – N and T. Also reveal the presence of 3 vowels – U, I and Y.
Revelations from the 2nd word: Presence of 1 vowel (I) and one consonant (T) , but not their positions
# Of Possible Solutions After the 2nd Word: Nine – ADMIT, AMBIT, ATTIC, TIDAL, BATIK, HABIT, VITAL, TACIT, and TIBIA. Four of these words (AMBIT, BATIK, TACIT, and TIBIA) are not very common words. Therefore, the possible words universe shrinks down to just 5.
3rd word: Based upon frequency distribution data, I was pretty sure that the last two letters are IT. I was also reasonably sure that the first letter is A, again based upon frequencies. Since majority of the wordle words use a compound consonant, I was leaning towards three words AMBIT, ADMIT and ATTIC.
I chose ATTIC as the third word, again, based on frequency data. Since ATTIC didn’t work, I was left with a hard choice between AMBIT and ADMIT. AMBIT is not as common as ADMIT. Admit as the fourth guess and it turned out to be the target word.
Objectives for the 3rd word: Eliminate 2 of the three possibilities among ATTIC, AMBIT and ADMIT.
EnotE (Eliminate-not-Enumerate) Strategy deployment: Did not use explicitly.
Hindsight: Compound consonants are more frequent than pairs of the same consonants. I should have tried ADMIT as the third guess. I’d have solved the puzzle in 3 guesses.
Lesson Learned /Relearned: Frequency distribution data is valuable and insightful.
Gut feel answer: None
Final thoughts: Wordle is a game of luck and skill. Only one doesn’t work. Luckily for me, frequency distribution data helped.
Golf Speak: “Par” for me. Mix of “pars” (4 guesses) and “birdies” (3 guesses) for the WordleBot community (exact mix not listed on Marc McLaren’s website.
© 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