I play in hard mode. I’ve been experimenting with different opening words, but right now I’m thinking of using BUNCH - I am most worried about another _ATER or _ATCH situation, so I feel that eliminating as many medium common consonants as possible is desirable before locking down squares with common consonants and vowels. Another benefit is that hitting a less common consonant narrows down the word list more than hitting a common consonant - though I think CLAMP from Johnny_Bravo above is a better word for this strategy.
In hard mode is it possible to put in letters that cannot be in that spot?
By the way, I did some checking and the letter combinations with the most possible final letter are _IGHT and _OUND (sight and sound). There are nine that end with _IGHT.
So, if I picked NIGHT as the first word and it had IGHT as green then all I could do is go through all of the _IGHT words and hope I pick the right one in five tries?
There wouldn’t be any strategy, other than don’t pick a _IGHT word unless you have a lot of the other letters eliminated.
If I get a green on the first pick I will frequently choose not to put in subsequent picks until I think I might have the word. Putting a different letter in that spot gives more information.
I’ve been starting with NOISE or PAEON for a vowel-rich start. Sometimes with OATER. Today I had four of the five letters by the third try and none of them were in the correct place. ::headsmack::
Some, like @Chefguy and me, go after the vowels as their strategy, while others like to go after the consonants. What’s your Wordle strategy?
Lately I’ve been using AIERY and LOTUS as my first two guesses. That knocks out all vowels while also knocking out four frequently-used consonants.
My next followup word is MUNCH, which collectively knocks out eight frequent consonants. If needed, like in today’s puzzle, I’ll then use PUDGE and FLOWN to go after the next most frequent consonants. After those four guesses today’s situation left me with this:
I started to worry. I only had the E and the R! But fortunately the fifth guess yielded and I was able to solve it.
With each guess I also have the sets of letters that remain. Those five sets are as follows and each set is listed by descending frequency:
AIERY — {T S O N L H D C U M G P F B W K Z V X J Q}
LOTUS — {N H D C M G P F B W K Z V X J Q}
MUNCH — {D G P F B W K Z V X J Q}
PUDGE — {F B W K Z V X J Q}
FLOWN — {B K Z V X J Q}
With each guess, depending on the results I can choose to deviate from this strategy.
Now thinking in reverse strategy, I wonder what words use the fewest letters from the first five guesses and also the most letters from the remaining set? I can think of BAKER as one that uses only three letters, the A E and R. If the Wordle word was BAKER (and if I stuck to the strategy) the results would be
for AIERY for LOTUS for MUNCH for PUDGE for FLOWN and leaving {B K Z V X J Q}
That’s not too bad of a situation. It’s easy to see the word is BAKER.
But I wonder if there’s another word that leaves the situation worse than BAKER?
Still starting out with AIERY, but after watching someone speedrun through one of the multiple-word versions of Wordle (Sedecordle, I think, which is 16 words), I’ve been trying a new approach to those: trying FLAME, BRICK, SHUNT and PODGY first. If I get enough to work with it’s all good; if not, I’ve just used 20 common letters including all the vowels, and leaving only J, Q, V, W, X and Z. Downside is that unless you hit with one of them, you’re only left with one miss. But I find that I rarely need that miss.
Wouldn’t use it for the original Wordle, though, unless you want a lot of 5’s.
