Defend The Indefensible: Wordle

Keep in mind with the multiple-words-one-letter-apart scenarios like JOLLY, the temptation is to keep swapping out letters and guessing, but if you can bundle the 'candidate' letters into one word, you *might* give yourself a better chance of solving. I was at DOLLY after four guesses and had FOLLY, GOLLY, HOLLY, JOLLY, and LOLLY as possibities. If your fifth guess is FIGHT and you get a hit on the f, g, or h, you can then solve on six. If you blank on FIGHT, you then know the answer is either JOLLY or LOLLY and you have a 50-50 shot on a guess on six. so an 80-20 chance at solving overall rather than an 40-60 chance if you just guess two of the five 'possibilities' with guesses five and six. I realize that if you're tracking your average guesses, a solution in five may be more valuable to you than a solution in six, and that will change the math a little. . .

those are all calculations when trying to solve the puzzle, and when desperate I use the strategy of trying to enter a word with the consonants that eliminate the most possibilities, like fight

but in the end with a word like jolly I'm just hoping to guess it in six.

xp there was discussion upthread about this where someone called that guess (not allowed on Wordle's hard setting!) a 'wellbreaker', a term I like but can't find any other reference to it!

I got JOLLY in 4

Lost my stats multiple times. Am only sad about the two holes in one. Current stats are 100% and:

1 - 0
2 - 13
3 - 112
4 - 123
5 - 36
6 - 6

I start with SLATE or SOARE most often.

Can you remember what words you did in one? Mine were EARTH and FIELD

One was SLATE, which was likely to happen eventually as I was playing it every day at the time. The other was SOUND, which was quite flabbergasting as I don't think I'd ever played it before.

i got bored with wordle. too easy to win.

my starting word used to be MIAOU.

I've never gotten it in one

and wordle is easy to win except when it's not

and it has been not a lot more lately. they are upping their game

only time i got it in one was with STEIN

xp yeah i have a sense of wordle getting tougher in the last couple of weeks? or i am experiencing a cognitive decline, also v.possible tbf

For whatever reason, maybe random, I feel like there've been more of those words where three or four of letters can work in the same order in a bunch of different words.

My strategy is very much 'solve in six' rather than 'solve as quickly as possible' (my first three words all mix three consonants/two vowels, and I won't *not* use those three words unless I know four letters after two (or one) guesses.) Skilled players who go for quicker solutions can get a better average score (e.g., Dan S) but may fail to solve in six more often.

Never tried 'hard setting', or Quordle, or Octordle. . .

xp Tipsy -- agreed; words like JOLLY where there are multiple rhyming words one letter off are landmines.

For whatever reason, I only have stats for the past couple of months. I try to keep my average guesses below 3, which I am just barely on the right side of at the moment:

1: 0
2: 4
3: 30
4: 23
5: 8
6: 2

I have never gotten it in 1, nor do I expect to. My opening word is one that is technically in the dictionary, but is much too uncommon* to ever be the daily puzzle. But it gives me a lot of information, and I've used it for years, so we work well together.

I do not play on Hard Mode and I am strongly averse to the idea of doing so. My second guess often omits some of the letters I found with my first guess, which is critical to solving it in 3. Also, I am not enough of a gambler to do the "GOLLY, HOLLY, JOLLY, DOLLY" roulette, when I could spend a guess on "JUDGE" and keep my streak going.

*: Pre-NYT there was a rule in place that the daily puzzle was drawn from the top (something thousand) most common words in the Wordle dictionary. While I don't know for sure that this remains the case, I do allow my guesses to be swayed by the relative obscurity of certain words that I know people would grumble about, including my own starting word: APORT

I've never gotten it in 1. Although I almost always play SLATE as my opening guess these days, I must not have used it in Dec. 2022, when that was the word. (I changed up my opening guess more often back then.)

So now, as long as I keep playing SLATE, I won't get it in 1 until they start reusing words, which probably won't happen for a long time.

My second guess often omits some of the letters I found with my first guess, which is critical to solving it in 3

the only way to play imo

I try to keep my average guesses below 3, which I am just barely on the right side of at the moment

iirc it’s impossible to have an average score above 3.2 or something in the long run (based on posts where people simulate thousands of wordles with optimal guesses)? nice scores regardless

My first is “scout”

They've been re-using words for a while now.

No they haven't!

I YIELD but really do feel like a BUNCH of words have come up more than once (no examples SORRY).

VALID

My only got-it-in-1 was NOISE, my starter word. Was going to change it after, but nah. I've got my guess #2 words all set depending on how guess #1 goes. 3s are currently leading 5s, but 6s lead 2s with 4 as my usual.

As of April 28, 2024, Wordle has never repeated a word that has already been used as an answer before, but since the number of 5-letter words is limited, it is inevitable that words will be repeated eventually.

Wordle began on June 18, 2021 with the first word being "CIGAR". The current possible answers list contains 2310 words, which means Wordle will run out of new words on October 15, 2027 unless they add more words to the list.

https://wordlesolver.app/faqs/repeat

I can't be alone in my error, maybe it stems from having played the same word so close to the answer more than once. I've got a bad misremembrance-by-association habit like that.

My first is TRIES, which afaik has never come up - my second's POLKA, which I think was some time last year? My third's DUNGY, which lol will never come up.

Which reminds me - the wordle bot will sometimes remark that a word is a good or bad guess but not likely to be an answer. It's doing that because the developers went through the 15000 possible words and cut them down to 4500 (as they point out in their FAQ, there's already been answers that are missing from the original 2300 list). And so that's part of the edge that they have, that their algorithm is tilted towards those words. But instead of saying that, they say "based on what I've learned playing Wordle", creating an image of some War Games situation where it's speed-played through all of the words in the real Wordle dictionary (which may not exist)

are you sure that wordlebot knows the true word list? i didn’t think that was the case. wordlebot seems to do have a prior on what kind of word is more likely to be in the words list; i.e. when there are only two possible words left it doesn’t just flip a coin but has a (“subjective”) probability of which one is more likely. i thought i’d read that over time it learns which words are more likely to be wordle list words, and that the developers tweak some parameters of the model that eg allow it to use more obscure words as guesses more often

Yeah, the original WordleBot "knew" the list of possible solutions but since the launch of WordleBot 2.0 it no longer does https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/17/upshot/wordle-wordlebot-new.html

iirc it’s impossible to have an average score above 3.2 or something in the long run (based on posts where people simulate thousands of wordles with optimal guesses)?

good point. i certainly don’t remember, though i wonder if they’ll slowly start seeding previously used words back in as we get closer to using up the original word list

are you sure that wordlebot knows the true word list?

No, I'm certain they don't! I mean, they probably know the 15,000 "every five letter word" list, but I didn't mean to imply that they know the word list. Like I say, it might not exist, Tracy Bennett might just pick a new word every day. Though Wikipedia suggests otherwise?

She made adjustments to Wordle, which was a new acquisition by the Times from its creator, creating a variety of level-of-difficulty throughout a week's puzzles and varying the lexical and semantical types of words from day to day, adding and removing words from the database, limiting the inclusion of words that have too many identical four-letter patterns in common with other words, avoiding words that are spelled differently in other versions of English, and experimenting with a themed entry on Thanksgiving Day. She considers the implications of words related to current news and researches possible offensive alternative uses of words. She has received pushback from players about themed entries.

Hrm, worth quoting the Worldlebot FAQ, which seems more recent than those references:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/16/upshot/wordlebot-faq.html

The original Wordle game ran off a 2,309-word “solution list,” but that list is no longer the official reference. There have now been published solutions that did not appear on the original list — like BALSA and KAZOO — and a handful of words on the list that are unlikely to pass the scrutiny of Times editors.

ah ok i don’t fully understand what you’re saying here then

It's doing that because the developers went through the 15000 possible words and cut them down to 4500 (as they point out in their FAQ, there's already been answers that are missing from the original 2300 list). And so that's part of the edge that they have, that their algorithm is tilted towards those words. But instead of saying that, they say "based on what I've learned playing Wordle", creating an image of some War Games situation where it's speed-played through all of the words in the real Wordle dictionary (which may not exist)

my understanding is there’s two lists wordlebot knows

1. a list of permissible guess words that is smaller than the list of permissible guess words we have access to (although they occasionally tweak it to allow it to use more obscure words as e.g. second guess)

2. a list of permissible solution words that is larger than the actually existing list of solution words

wordlebot doesn’t know the list of solution words, but it knows not all words in 2 are solution words, and as it plays it updates a model of which word is more likely to be a solution word. that’s how i interpret it saying “what i’ve learned plying wordle”—i.e. it learned by playing all games so far

Is the full list of daily solutions (as currently stands) still held in the JavaScript if you peek? I obviously don't want to look into it for fear of spoilers but I know that well into the NYT era I would be so impatient that I'd be playing a day ahead of everyone else by just changing the date on my iPhone. And in the past you could upload a grid to WordleBot that came from an unofficial "make your own Wordle" site and it would recognise it and say "this looks like a board for game 1560" or whatever even if Wordle itself was only up to game 800 or whatever.

lol that’s dedicated hacking

If I click "did you beat the bot?" and then "read my analysis of today's wordle", the bot gives skill and luck levels for my choices, which I don't generally believe at all. I'm often surprised to find that my skill level is below the NYT avg.

When I guess a word in 3 or 4, it is sometimes because after one or two words, depending on my success, I can work out as many outcomes as possible, write them down, consider which letters are most used, and choose a second or third word that I know is not the solution but which eliminates as many other words as possible. Sometimes I'm successful, not always.

Then the bot often says something inane and gives me a low skill score, like today after my second choice - "this guess wasn't my favorite, but you lucked out! You narrowed it down to two remaining words" - which would be insulting if it wasn't so funny.

i think the way they do it is skill is calculated a priori (expectation of how few words remain over all possible solution words) and luck is how much further your guess was ex post than that prior average. so it should reward you with a high skill score for that procedure. might be you missed some possible words when making the list (i do something similar when i have time, it’s hard to be exhaustive)

But I don't see how my skill is less than the NYT average, or how their determination that I'm lucky is actually because of luck.

From the bot it seems like the NYT players' score averages are amazing for this, with a very high skill level

im with you on the nyt average thing. pisses me off to see how close i am to the average whenever i think im on an absolute hot streak. i think part of the problem is the way they normalize the scores there’s very little variance, so you might have a skill 1 or 2 points higher than nyt average but be at the 90th percentile. at least that’s what i tell myself..

A terrible 5 today with three attempts to guess just the first and final letter.

If you can recall any past solutions, until 2027 your chances should slowly improve.

What is this sorcery?! I can rarely remember yesterday's word

Ha ha - my recall can't claim to be very good but some more distinctive words do stick in my head. And it helps that I'm in a WhatsApp group for it with three pals as the associated discussion might help to lodge things a bit better.

I hate it when my first word leaves me with an A in the middle and an E at the end, which has happened at least a few times in recent memory. No matter how many consonants or vowels I think of to add to the second choice, there are so many possibilities that answer is always elusive

yesterday's was a close SHAVE - on my fifth guess I had SHA_E, with V M D K and L still available

Yeah, I had SHAME on my second guess, but it took me all 6 to get to SHAVE argh.

I got that one in 3 which is about the only time Wordle has been kind to me in the last few months

Back to 4 today sigh

Can I complain about Connections in this thread too? Because I have an issue with today’s.

i love to gripe about connections, let's hear yours!

xp hero?
I've only recently started playing it but today's was the first I didn't get in time. for a UKer some of the options are a bit baffling.