Daily Quordle 891
CHEAT
ROUND
SLIMY
SCOWL - 4
SINGE - 5
QUOTE - 6
PLUMB
PLUMP - 8
Missed the 50/50 on PUMB/PLUMP, but can’t complain.
Daily Quordle 890
SLATE
CHOIR
COMET
COVET (4)
HOWDY
LODGE (6)
YACHT (7)
BELLY (8)
I was too quick to toss up HOWDY as a sleuth to check the _ATCH trap for the #1 word…didn’t notice the T was in green from getting COVET. I got the Y though, as well as found out the other one was LODGE (over Noble), so it wasn’t a total waste. I was glad to have chosen BELLY correctly (over Jelly).
Daily Quordle 892
CHEAT
ROUND
SLIMY
MIRTH - 4
MAUVE -5
BLISS - 6
SLUNK
SWUNG - 8
Decent trap tonight, S_UN_. I was lucky to have those in place, and three guesses left. I probably should have guessed SPUNK, since I’d already eliminated L.
Daily Quordle 891
SLATE
CHOIR
SCOWL (3)
QUOTE (4)
BLUFF
PLUNK
PLUMP (7)
SINGE (8)
This could have gone worse…I kind of just winged this one and went with whatever came to me first.
ETA - I didn’t think of Plumb, but Bluff eliminated it anyways. Thinking back, it also eliminated Flung and Flunk too, so it helped more than I thought it did.
Daily Quordle 892
SLATE
CHOIR
BIRTH
GIRTH
FIRTH
MIRTH (6)
BLISS (7)
MAUVE (8)
SWUNG (9)
Didn’t see the trap…thought it was just Birth or Girth. 
At least I was able to solve the remaining three words and not fail.
Daily Quordle 893
CHEAT
ROUND
SLIMY
SCRUM - 4
TENOR - 5
FIGHT
SOGGY - 7
WHUMP
WIGHT - 9
A bit tricky tonight. I had the last word down to BIGHT / HIGHT / PIGHT / WIGHT. WIGHT seemed like the only remotely common word, but I decided not to risk it. Played WHUMP as a sleuth word.
Daily Quordle 894
CHEAT
ROUND
SLIMY
OLDER - 4
VIDEO - 5
FROCK - 6
GRABS
GRAIN - 8
I figured the last word was probably BRAIN or GRAIN, so I used GRABS as a sleuth word to be sure.
Daily Quordle 893
SLATE
CHOIR
SOUND
TENOR (4)
PITHY
SCRUB
SCRUM (7)
FIGHT
WIGHT (9)
(SOGGY) - X
Scrum and Wight? The games seem to be getting more difficult and tricky these days. Could just be me, but I used to do a lot better. I don’t mind a challenge, but struggling or failing so often isn’t fun.
I really think it depends on starting words and strategy. I got SCRUM and TENOR pretty easily. My usual 3 starting words (although I don’t always play all 3 of them) include an M, so I didn’t have to guess SCRUB. I had enouh guesses left to sleuth out WIGHT.
I’ll save any comments on 894 until you’ve played it.
I agree…my two start words really do check and or rule out a lot of words most days. I’m not going to do as well when there are a lot of lower use letters, or uncommon words either as I tend to want to go with the more common ones first. I don’t really want to have three start words on the regular, but maybe I’ll go that route for a bit and see how that does me.
I played Sequence tonight with three completely different start words, just to see how that would go. I added lower use letters in all three words. It actually helped for one of the words that would have had several choices, but I could have gotten a couple of the words without having done that. Sometimes it’s just luck of the draw.
Sure, that’s the obvious strategy, and there’s nothing wrong with it. I just meant that there’s a little more to it. My starting word used to be RATED. Would TRADE be better? It’s the same five letters, so you’ll get the same number of hits. But maybe RATED gets 3 yellows, and TRADE gets 2 greens and a yellow. Some days it will be the other way around. If there is a truly optimized first word, or words, I don’t know what it is.
My three opening words cover all five vowels, plus Y, and the nine most common consonants. The trade-off is that only gives me six remaining guesses for all four words. What I’ve started doing is, after the first two guesses, if I’m absolutely certain of an answer, I’ll play it. That happened about a weeks ago. It went
CHEAT
ROUND
HYENA - 3
I could have played SLIMY, my usual third guess, but I’d already used a Y in HYENA. I changed my third blind guess to LIMBS.
It’s been working for me pretty well. I very rarely get a 6, but I do usually solve the puzzle.
Daily Quordle 895
CHEAT
ROUND
SLIMY
STEAM - 4
STAID - 5
SCOUR - 6
WHERE - 7
Typical 7.
Daily Quordle 894
SLATE
CHOIR
OLDER (3)
VIDEO (4)
FROCK (5)
BRAIN
GRAIN (7)
Lost the coin toss between Brain and Grain, but I’ll take the 7!
This is what I was going to mention earlier about the luck of the draw. When I played 894, I used my standard 3 blind guesses. Fifteen distinct letters, spread across four answer words, and after those three guesses I had a grand total of 1 green square. You had 5 green squares after just two guesses.
Other days that might well be reversed.
Checking the top consonants (RTSLN) and at least the AEIO, is usually the best strategy, but the order in which they display can make a big difference depending on the answer. Way back when I was trying to figure out what I felt might be the best start words, I took into consideration how often I thought each of those letters show up in which positions. That still doesn’t guarantee anything though, of course, and I don’t know the actual stats of what letters show up the most in what positions either.
Usually, if I don’t get much in my two start words, I will toss up DUMPY, but sometimes I just feel like taking a chance without it and try to solve a word. Or I might see a better word to sleuth things. The bottom line though is some days you just get lucky and others you don’t so much, but I think one main reason I’ve been kind of struggling lately is I am not putting as much effort into it as I used to.
Yep…luck of the draw is huge. You can only be so strategic, but a lot of this game really is about getting lucky.
If we can analyze which letters are used most requently in different English words (and every Wheel of Fortune viewer knows we can), we could also analyze which positions they occur in most frequently. I’d be surprised if someone hasn’t done such an analysis on which opening word, or words, would generate the most useful info in wordle and/or quordle. Better still if you could do it with the actual word lists those games use. I kind of like SLIMY because it has the Y last, which seems a common occurrence. I originally used RATED as my starting word, before someone here mentioned it never uses past tense verbs, so a D at the end may not be as common as I thought.
You could also analyze the best opening guesses heuristically. With access to all the guesses from all players, see which starting words led to the lowest average score, or the highest probability of winning.
Could I ask you to stick around at least one more week?
Daily Quordle 896
CHEAT
ROUND
SLIMY
SLUMP - 4
CHUMP - 5
DATUM - 6
KNOLL - 7
Speaking of the luck of the draw, I had 4 greens for both SLUMP and CHUMP.
There are a few places online that have lists of the “best start words”…someone ran a bunch of words in a computer program of sorts and put up the stats on that, but I really liked mine and never tried those words…can’t recall now what they thought was the best word, but I wasn’t convinced it really was - lol.
Not sure if I’ve mentioned this in here before, but for Wordle I used to go with different start words daily…sometimes I’d repeat them, but mostly I mixed it up, and I averaged 4 guesses with that. It wasn’t until about a year ago that I changed to using Slate + Choir every day, and now my average is 3 guesses, so I decided to stick with it. And for Quordle, I’d say in general they usually do me rather well.
If you have a NYT account, the Wordle Bot shows you an analysis on your words as well as others, which is interesting. I don’t have an account, but you didn’t used to need one to see that…it doesn’t cost anything but I just haven’t set one up yet.
In spite of my grumblings, I still like playing the game (except when I fail 
) - for how much longer I don’t know, but I’ll be sticking around for a while longer at least. 
I go in phases with how I feel about the games, but sometimes just taking a day or two off helps. I don’t do that too often though.
Daily Quordle 895
SLATE
CHOIR
SCOUR (3)
STAIN
STAID (5)
STEAM (6)
WHERE (7)
Because I don’t have an N in my start words, I thought it’d be best to go for Stain before STAID…I’m ok with that miss. I then had two 50/50’s with Steak-Steam, and Rhyme-Where. I decided to go for the M and glad I chose STEAM first…not only with it being correct, but it told me the other one was WHERE. So this game worked out well.