Wordle Lovers - Play the NYT Daily Game

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gmax137 said:
Wordle 626 3/6

⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩
⬜🟩🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

using @Borek 's video advice
Probably a good thing that I didn't mention that Grant put out another video a week later mentioning that he'd made a minor mistake in his code and came up with a more correct first word.



Fast forward to 10:03 to see his list of words ranked 1 to 15 in the far right hand column.
 
I'd assume that some of the best opening words would be those including the most frequent letters in English words. Like the most abundant tiles in Scrabble. Those would be: "EAIONRS".

I'm not adhering to this priniple exactly though. I have a habit of starting with words such as

SQUAT
TOXIC
PAUSE
etc.

Even though technically X and Q are probally bad choices for starters.

You have any favorite start words?
 
sbrothy said:
I'd assume that some of the best opening words would be those including the most frequent letters in English words. Like the most abundant tiles in Scrabble. Those would be: "EAIONRS".
That would not be applicable to the five-lettered subset of the English words. If you consider only the short list of 2300 or so words that are candidates for the NYT Wordle, the frequency order is
EAROTLSINC.
If you consider the extended list of all 13,000 or so five-lettered English words, the order changes to
SEAORILTNU.
The promotion of "S" to number 1 occurs because of obscure plural-like words such as ADAYS or plurals such as WAKFS. I used the latter to simultaneously exclude words containing "K", "W", and "F" from a list of possible answers. It is useful to know that the bot, which evaluates one's answer, rejects it if it's not on the extended list although the daily candidates are drawn from the shorter NYT list.
 
kuruman said:
That would not be applicable to the five-lettered subset of the English words. If you consider only the short list of 2300 or so words that are candidates for the NYT Wordle, the frequency order is
EAROTLSINC.
If you consider the extended list of all 13,000 or so five-lettered English words, the order changes to
SEAORILTNU.
The promotion of "S" to number 1 occurs because of obscure plural-like words such as ADAYS or plurals such as WAKFS. I used the latter to simultaneously exclude words containing "K", "W", and "F" from a list of possible answers. It is useful to know that the bot, which evaluates one's answer, rejects it if it's not on the extended list although the daily candidates are drawn from the shorter NYT list.

Duh!

Ofcourse I failed to take that into account. In hardmode there's also the occasional word you cannot use because those rules are in effect. I think that was the source of my misunderstanding that "orbit " wasn't accepted as a word. Ie. The hardmode rules. Because surely it must be, no?EDIT: Corrected wordsalat.
 
sbrothy said:
Duh!

Ofcourse I failed to take that into account. In hardmode there's also the occasional word you cannot use because those rules are in effect. I think that was the source of my misunderstanding that "orbit " wasn't accepted as a word. Ie. The hardmode rules. Because surely it must be, no?
Yes, ORBIT must have been rejected because of the hard rules. I started out in hard mode but then I came across single degeneracies, i.e. words in which you know the positions of 4 letters but there are several candidates for the fifth position. At that point, I realized, sheer luck prevails and skill is thrown out the window. That didn't interest me so I abandoned hard mode.
 
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kuruman said:
Yes, ORBIT must have been rejected because of the hard rules. I started out in hard mode but then I came across single degeneracies, i.e. words in which you know the positions of 4 letters but there are several candidates for the fifth position. At that point, I realized, sheer luck prevails and skill is thrown out the window. That didn't interest me so I abandoned hard mode.
I agree, there is skill in choosing the best "deciding" word.

EDIT: Especially since picking the "most used" of the candidate solutions is no good, because each of the 2400 or whatever words is equally likely.
 
And then... I sometimes fall prey to tht trap that one of the letters I already used can be used again. I have a hard time believnig that they made a mistake. On the other hand I'm a retired prgarmmer so Nothing really surprises my anymore in that world. :)
 
gmax137 said:
EDIT: Especially since picking the "most used" of the candidate solutions is no good, because each of the 2400 or whatever words is equally likely.
Not all ##N## words are equally likely. My understanding is that words are not reused. When ##N## puzzles have been published, it's bye-bye Wordle. If you have kept track of the used words since day ##1##, on day ##N## the probability that you will get it right with one try will be ##1##. I have not kept track of the used words, but I loaded the two lists on Excel and wrote VBA code to do the searches and the bookkeeping.
 
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kuruman said:
Not all ##N## words are equally likely. My understanding is that words are not reused. When ##N## puzzles have been published, it's bye-bye Wordle. If you have kept track of the used words since day ##1##, on day ##N## the probability that you will get it right with one try will be ##1##. I have not kept track of the used words, but I loaded the two lists on Excel and wrote VBA code to do the searches and the bookkeeping.
Well I'm glad we're not playing prices though. You sure you don't have too much spare time?! :P
 
sbrothy said:
I'd assume that some of the best opening words would be those including the most frequent letters in English words. Like the most abundant tiles in Scrabble. Those would be: "EAIONRS".

I'm not adhering to this priniple exactly though. I have a habit of starting with words such as

SQUAT
TOXIC
PAUSE
etc.

Even though technically X and Q are probally bad choices for starters.

You have any favorite start words?
Going with the Information Theory approach, starting with something with an X or Q has low probability of producing useful info (but when it does, it could be valuable)

PAUSE might not be a bad starter, since it has 3 vowels, and should yield information most of the time.
 
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scottdave said:
PAUSE might not be a bad starter, since it has 3 vowels, and should yield information most of the time.
I like to check "h" and "y" at an early stage. A lack of "h" automatically rules out "ch","sh","gh","th","wh" and a "y" at the end is also useful. Hard words are those with double occurrences and those where changing one letter allows many solutions.