When Wordle first became popular, there were a bunch of columns on best words, written by someone who had won a bunch of games in a row.
The genius of the game is it looks very challenging, but with good guesses there a usually few options left by the end. Of course, there are games when a win is lucky since there are many words with a common stem, just some are more common than others.
Anyone else not yet defeated? I have gone to six guesses seven or so times. This relatively unimpressive feat deserves little. But I am wondering how common it is for people who play regularly
I lost my streak around 110, but I was playing on hard mode and with a random starting word each day. It was only a matter of time before I backed myself into a corner.
I think I could have gone undefeated (or at least quite a lot longer) if I’d focused solely on optimal strategies, and I absolutely could have on easy mode.
Mrs. solost and I got into the habit of playing the game together every day. Maybe cheating a bit since two heads are better than one, but we always played on hard mode and were undefeated for many months before finally succumbing. I forget what the first word was that we lost to, but we were recently defeated for only the second time just about a week ago, to the word ‘khaki’ (don’t think there’s a way to play old games so spoiler-tagging is probs unnecessary, but just in case).
Yup, this was my undoing. I’ve missed one out of 220, playing in hard mode. I think I had SHA_E by my third guess, and went through SHADE, SHARE, SHAVE, and SHAPE. The word was SHAME.
I posted about it the Wordle thread - I didn’t know it pops up the word after your sixth guess, so I thought it was commenting on my performance like the usual “impressive!” or “nice!”
That’s the downside to hard mode. It’s harder in that you’re more likely to lose, but it’s less strategic. You could have guessed DRIPS or something to narrow down which of the remaining letters was right.
No, it just requires different strategies. The strategic mistake was guessing whatever left him with SHA_E in the first place. On hard mode, you always need to consider what you’ll be left with if you guess almost correctly.
I would say it’s still less strategic. No matter what you have done previously, hard mode presents fewer choices, and in particular, fewer opportunities to make “wilder” guesses that nevertheless do a better job at narrowing the possible outcomes. And sure, the strategies are different, but so is chess vs. chess where everyone is a pawn. Adding restrictions doesn’t make it better.
I play every day and have missed 2 or 3 (one when my flight was delayed). Since NYT acquired it, the word is often more clever and less solvable by recourse to an ETAOIN SHRDLU strategy.
I’m not sure I’d take that as the lesson, because as you say, there are a lot of words that can be traps, and they typically are ones with the more common letters. But thinking about it more, I can see how thinking farther ahead could pay off in my 2nd and 3rd guesses.
I posted my color boxes back in the Wordle thread, but I didn’t post the words I used so I’m somewhat guessing what I would have chosen. But this is a reasonable guess: STARE SNAKE SCALE SHAPE SHADE SHAVE
Knowing that SHA_E is a trap, I should have guessed words where both the new letters could be in the 4th position before guessing H. SPADE and SLAKE would have eliminated or confirmed letters better than SNAKE and SCALE.
ETA: this analysis is far beyond my usual approach to Wordle, so I expect I will fall into another trap at some point. But it’s fun to think about.
