Wordle Lovers - Play the NYT Daily Game

[kuruman]

Wordle 495 3/6

 

[Chestermiller]

There must be an optimum 3 starting words. I always start with ponds, laugh, and write, varying their order from day to day.

 

[fresh_42]

A friend of mine always checks vowels first with "early" and "pious". I vary between "field", "prime", and "torus" depending on the vowels in the previous solution. I like to check "h" as well since it can occur in "th", "wh", "gh", "ch" and "sh". No "h" rules out a lot of possibilities.

 

[Orodruin]

I think we have had this discussion before in this thread ... My starting words are WEARY and PIOUS as I prefer the W over the L. Letters that I like to check at an early stage apart from those two words are CHT depending on the result of the two seed words.

Today was a special day as my first seed word gave a pretty decent result already so my second guess already focused on ruling out all but one alternative for sure.

 

[OmCheeto]

It wasn't until a couple of days ago when @Wrichik Basu mentioned they had the same guesses as the 'WordleBot' in game 494 that I found out about 'WordleBot' and discovered I had also used the exact same guesses for that game. Thinking how dreadfully awful it would be if everyone used the exact same algorithm to make their guesses, I decided this morning to instead of using the statistically best first word, I would randomize it to the top 10 with unique first characters. About a month ago, I decided to throw out my original seed word, 'WEIRD', and replace it with my new one that my method decided was the best. Of course, there is some debate as to what the best first word is. I was just surprised that I came up with a good one independently, without just googling it.

My method: I counted up the number of times each letter was used in each word in each column and added up those number for each word. Scores range from 1403 for my and WordleBot's current seed word, 'SLATE', to 272 for 'AFFIX', my 'worst' Wordle seed word candidate.

It should be noted that I have always use a spreadsheet to play the game after game #462. Before that I used it about 50% of the time.

 

[kuruman]

I favor a probabilistic approach. It turns out that if one orders the letters by frequency of appearance, the ordered list is different if one includes all the words in the English language as opposed to the five-letter words only. The ordered list changes even more when one omits plurals or third person singulars, e.g. RATES, LINKS etc. which the NYT list seems not to contain.

If I start with two words that, together, contain the top 10 letters of the NYT-limited list, I have a good chance to pick up enough letters to solve in 1-2 additional steps. The total number of occurrences of the top 10 letters is 2/3 of total occurrences of all 26 letters. It's a win-win situation because if I don't pick up any letters after the first two words (see post #605), the absence of the top 10 letters from the solution reduces the number of contender words to 16.

Of course, if the first attempt reveals 2 or more letters as belonging to the solution, I reevaluate whether I should use the second word or use one that contains the already known letters.

Here are my words STAIR CLONE.
And here is the ordered list of letters and their distribution within the words (NYT list).

Spoiler

Truth in advertising: I too use a spreadsheet to solve the daily puzzle. It is a more efficient bookkeeper than I would ever hope to be.

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Wordle 496 3/6

 

[fresh_42]

Wordle 496 5/6

 

[DrGreg]

Wordle 496 6/6

 

[OmCheeto]

...

Here are my words STAIR CLONE.
...
Truth in advertising: I too use a spreadsheet to solve the daily puzzle. It is a more efficient bookkeeper than I would ever hope to be.

Your first word was the solution to game # 294. Do you not keep track of those? This is one reason I don't feel bad about using a spreadsheet, as 21% of the solutions have been used up so far, and I've the furthest thing from a perfect memory there is.

 

[Orodruin]

Wordle 496 3/6

 

[kuruman]

Your first word was the solution to game # 294. Do you not keep track of those? This is one reason I don't feel bad about using a spreadsheet, as 21% of the solutions have been used up so far, and I've the furthest thing from a perfect memory there is.

No, I don't keep track of these. Besides, I didn't start this until relatively late. My first one was 410.

 

[OmCheeto]

Wordle 496 3/6

 

[kuruman]

Wordle 496 4/6

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Wordle 497 5/6

 

[fresh_42]

Wordle 497 5/6

 

[DrGreg]

Wordle 497 X/6







Brain failure

 

[Orodruin]

Wordle 497 6/6

 

[OmCheeto]

Wordle 497 5/6

 

[Orodruin]

Rough one …

 

[OmCheeto]

Wordle 498 5/6







I got tired of playing last.

and yes, that yellow letter is the same letter, in all the wrong places...

 

[kuruman]

Wordle 497 4/6

 

[fresh_42]

Wordle 498 4/6

 

[DrGreg]

Wordle 498 5/6

 

[Orodruin]

Wordle 498 4/6

 

[OmCheeto]

Wordle 499 3/6

 

[Orodruin]

Wordle 499

 

[kuruman]

Wordle 498 5/6

 

[fresh_42]

Too bad we have no Australian here.

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Too bad we have no Australian here.

Maybe @davenn can join?