Wordle Bulletin – Wordle #450 (September 12, 2022)
Preamble: My goal is to solve Wordle puzzles with 3.5 guesses on an average. Currently I am running at 3.73, just slightly better than the overall average (4.1) as reported by New York Times’ WordleBot*.
WordleGuru Grid
Wordle #450; September 12, 2022
Overall Summary: Today’s Wordle is a real difficult (doozy?) one. The NYT’s WordleBot average is 4.7 compared to the average for all the Wordles to date (4.1), per Marc McLaren*. My score today was “par” (using the golf metaphor; a typical 18-hole golf course is a par-72 golf course, meaning average for the 18 holes is par-4). Average score of 4.7 indicates that more players are making “bogeys” than “birdies”!
The target word is not a “rare” word. So, the difficulty must arise from the fact that it is not following the common characteristics as discussed below.
Structure: Today’s target word is not following the most common characteristics of Wordle words. It has three vowels excluding the letter Y whereas a majority of the Wordle words have two vowels. Additionally, it has one vowel repeated. Also, it doesn’t have a compound consonant (such as CH). The letter Z is very rarely found in the target words.
Quality and the impact of the first two words: My go-to seed word (ALERT) was not as productive today as it has been in the recent past. It revealed only one letter (E) but not in the right position. There was no productive way to employ the EnotE (Eliminate not Enumerate) strategy at this stage due to almost 100+ possible answers. So, I needed to enter a second guess word.
Since majority of the Wordle words have two vowels, I needed to find the second vowel if there is one. My go-to second word (COINS) doesn’t have U or Y. There is no five-letter word that has the absent 5 vowels (A, I, O, U and Y). I could not think of a five-letter word with four of the five absent vowels. After a lot of deliberation, I chose PIOUS as the second guess. The consonants P and S are in the middle of the pack when it comes to frequency anywhere in the word.
Disappointingly, PIOUS only revealed only one additional letter (O) in the third position. Incidentally, O is the most frequent letter in the third position. Now that I knew the presence of two vowels (E and O), I needed to focus on the consonants. At this stage there were nine possible answers – BOOZE, COOED, EVOKE, GEODE, GNOME, GOOEY, HOOEY, HOOVE, and WOOED.
Eliminate-not-Enumerate strategy: Now I was ready to employ my EnotE strategy. I could not come up with a single word that would eliminate eight possibilities and leave me with the answer. Also, I could not use one of the nine possible words as an elimination word either. So, I had to find the best substitute.
After a lot of deliberation, I came up with WHINY as the elimination word. This word is not perfect, but I was hoping it would do the job in a fairly decent manner. Unfortunately, it didn’t. I was still left with four possible answers – BOOZE, COOED, EVOKE, and GEODE.
I debated whether to try one more elimination word or take a chance and pick one of these four (none of the 4 words if used as an elimination word would eliminate the remaining 3 words). I consulted the frequency table and found that the word with the highest frequency letters in their exact positions among these four is BOOZE, as described below.
B is the 3rd most frequent letter in the first position, O is the most frequent letter in the 2nd position as well as the 3rd position and E is the most frequent letter in the 5th position. Z is not a very often used letter but given the strength of 4 of the 5 letters (B, O, O, E) I decided to go with BOOZE.
Today the LadyLuck was on my side and BOOZE worked. I was fortunate enough to make “par” again today. It could have been a lot worse. It could easily have gone to six guesses today (double bogey). So, on the whole it was a productive morning.
Hindsight: Looking back, I don’t think I could have done any better unless I was willing to change my seed word. SOIRE and ROATE as seed words would have revealed two vowels in exact positions. But that is hindsight. The long-term success of a seed word requires large enough sample. Switching in and out breaks the statistical underpinnings of the model and I didn’t want to do that.
Final Thoughts. I’m very happy with my performance today. Thank you LadyLuck. As I say, Wordle is a game of skill and luck. One without the other doesn’t work.
© 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