Daily Quordle 428
I play with the self-imposed rule that every guess has to use all the known letters from at least one of the quadrants.
Daily Quordle 428
Interesting. Do you start immediately with your second guess? Do you have any rules on how to choose which word? In your current game, for example, you hit no letters in the first word in the bottom left. Would you allow yourself to choose the bottom left and therefore use five new letters for your second guess?
Spitballing from there, I can now envision logical mechanics for a true hard mode:
First word can be anything, obviously.
Every subsequent guess must apply “super hard mode” rules for whichever word has the most hits. In the event of a tie, most greens is the tiebreaker. If still tied, you get to pick the one you want to go with. (As an example, if one word hits four yellows while another hits three greens, the one with four yellows would be the required play.)
“Super hard mode” rules being that all greens must be replayed in place, all yellows must be replayed where they’ve never shown yellow before, all misses can never be reused. This is different from standard Wordle hard mode which lets you replay a yellow in the same spot and I believe also lets you reuse letters that have already come up as misses.
I kind of think I want to try that. (EDIT: Yeah, I’m actually excited to try this. This is the way. My three-word opener strategy has yielded a “perfect” score [4567] two out of the four times I’ve tried it I believe. Already boring.)
I’ve only played Quordle three times. I hadn’t thought about what to so in a quadrant where the first guess comes up blank. I would probably not play a blank quadrant unless all four are blank.
With Wordle I play all greens must be played every guess and in place, every yellow played into a space that it hasn’t been used yet, and rejects are never replayed.
Daily Quordle 428
Start Words: CHORE + SLAIN
GUESS WORDS:
Summary
QUIRE (I was sure this was the answer for the #2 word!)
SUGAR (#1 = 4)
TRIAD (#4 = 5)
DITTY (#3 = 6)
FIBRE (#2 = 7) <— dratted UK spelling (no offense to those who spell things this way)
Wednesday, March 29th
Daily Quordle 429
PLANT
CRANE
GRAND
BRAND
SANDY
ADMIN
MOIST
FAITH
Admin? Seriously? That’s some bullshit. The only reason I guessed it was because I was trying to fit in another vowel and it didn’t change to red text so I knew it would accept it.
Obnoxious abbreviations aside, this was quite satisfying. Pretty darn challenging, and I’m digging it.
I came up with another tiebreaker, so now I’m calling this method super duper hard mode.
Most unique letters hit is the primary measure. A double letter where both have turned yellow or green counts as two unique letters. Like if the guess is latte and the answer is title, that’s four unique letters discovered, two greens and two yellows.
First tiebreaker is most greens.
Second tiebreaker is most eliminated positions for yellows. If one puzzle has moved some yellows around while the other has not, the former has revealed more information and therefore must be played first. (A yellow that turns into a green only counts as a green.)
If two puzzles show the same number of greens and yellows, and both have the same number of eliminated yellow positions, only then does it become player’s choice. I expect this to be extremely rare, with the vast majority of the time being locked into a single puzzle.
I like it. The thing that bothered me was being able to choose which puzzle to play, which to me feels like cherry picking. This should largely eliminate choice as a factor.
I’m expecting to lose fairly frequently, but that’s okay. I’m pretty stoked to post an 8 on my first try. Especially considering the complaint I voiced in my spoiler text.
Daily Quordle 429
NOISE
FAULT
FAITH - 3
MOIST - 4
ADMIN - 5
BRAND - 6
Admin? That’s even worse than fibre. 
But if you largely eliminate your ability to choose which puzzle to play you’ll miss out on some of the strategic aspects of Quordle.
Like today I was obviously drawn right to my all green _oist, but not knowing if it was moist, hoist or even joist I looked around first to see if I could try a M or H somewhere else and luckily found faith. If I had to play it first, as is, there’s a very good chance I would have wasted a turn.
True, but also true of hard mode in the regular wordle.
True, but after playing this for awhile I realized it’s best not to go at quordle as if it’s just wordle x 4. You’ll see that it’s not just four random words, but usually 2 or 3 of them that are interconnected in one or more ways that helps you solve the others.
Like yesterday there was TRIAD and SUGAR with the A in the not so typical position. Today there’s MOIST AND FAITH with the I in the center + the T.
I suppose I could adopt an anti-hardmode strategy, with all the same restrictions except instead of having to play the most-solved word I have to always play the least-solved word. That feels contrary to the spirit of hard mode, but might be interesting in and of itself.
Unrelated question: Not counting that one puzzle where octal was the answer for all four, does quordle repeat previous answers?
Yes, it does, but it’s usually long enough in between that it’s not real obvious.
Excellent. That’s my main gripe about Wordle. Not having any repeats adds unnecessary meta knowledge, which I’m not a fan of.
Daily Quordle 429
Simplified hard mode rule: After the first guess, any word played must be a potential solution to one of the unsolved quads that has matches.
Interestingly, this feature is how I solved today’s puzzle:
I spent four guesses to start: plant, crane, grand, brand. Of course this revealed very little about the other words. It’s a trap! At this point I figured I had no chance to win.
But the A N D gave me most of admin, which I was forced into after guessing sandy with my fifth guess. After sandy the other two words were largely untouched, but then admin gave me M and I to go with the already-revealed S and T which immediately made moist pretty obvious. I was then left with A I T and just had to add the F and H to finish the game with faith. This was made easier by the fact that there were not many “good” letters left to choose from, so they kind of stood out.
Yep! I very much enjoy that aspect of quordle. That’s why I was cautioning you not to be too rigid in playing it out, as you might lose that advantage if you do.
And unlike wordle, if you realize there’s a trap, you can let that one be and move to another word in hopes of turning up more letters that will help you avoid the trap.
My main concern is getting caught in one of the larger traps, which could take more than six guesses just for the first word. Fortunately the larger traps are pretty rare*. I think there’s only a handful with more than five choices. _ound and _ight are the two biggest ones, but my opener of plant should sidestep both right out of the gate, forcing me to work on a different word and hopefully bypass the trap altogether.
*If I recall correctly, there’s one 9, one 8, two 7s and maybe four 6s. Of course, add up all the actual answers in those traps and it’s over 50, but still.
Fortunately the other words usually contain some of the eliminating letters, but I know that _ound has gotten me a few times.
Daily Quordle 429
Start Words: STORE + CHAIN
GUESS WORDS:
Summary
FAITH (#3 = 3)
MOIST (#1 = 4)
ADMIN (#4 = 5)
GRAND
BRAND (#2 = 7)
Fairly easy one today, but for the #2 word which could have been Brand, Grand, or Drank. I just chose incorrectly and lost out on a “perfect score”, but still happy with my results.