# "Wordle," a strangely compelling word game (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Tags:** board-card-word-game\ **Created:** [December 24, 2021, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604 "2021-12-24T21:12:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 481
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9602 "2023-03-09T05:51:01Z")
> [@psychobunny](#): > > Can I respectfully ask that the quordle posts be put in a separate thread? Seconded. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9603 "2023-03-09T06:56:10Z")
Wordle 628 5/6\* 🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜ 🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 RATES ENROL DEMUR CRIPE WHERE Geez, that turned out more of a slog than it should have been… ---
**Author:** ![QMatic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/aeb1de/32.png) [@QMatic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QMatic)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9604 "2023-03-09T09:20:31Z")
Wordle 628 3/6\* ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 CLAIM SOUTH WHERE ---
**Author:** ![pjd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pjd/32/3009_2.png) [@pjd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pjd)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9605 "2023-03-09T09:35:53Z")
Wordle 628 3/6\* ⬜🟨⬜🟩⬜ ⬜🟨⬜🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 BEARD SWORE ← nearly went with QUIRE…? WHERE ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9606 "2023-03-09T10:59:17Z")
Wordle 628 3/6 ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜ 152 ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟩 3 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 SLA **R** T NIC_H_ **E** =\> Look over there, **WHERE** There, there’s a lady that I used to know The only other possibility was WHORE, and I figured the NYT would screen that out. Thirding the suggestion that the Quordlers find their own thread. ---
**Author:** ![Author\_Balk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Author\_Balk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Author_Balk)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9607 "2023-03-09T11:42:42Z")
If anyone cares about the best word for algorithms. NYT added more words to the possible word list. Now TARSE moves into first place. SALET drops to second. This can give 3.4140. Wordle 628 4/6 ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟨🟨⬜⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 CRANE TIROS REVUE WHERE ---
**Author:** ![chiliwillybing](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chiliwillybing/32/12394_2.png) [@chiliwillybing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiliwillybing)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9608 "2023-03-09T11:52:57Z")
Wordle 628 3/6 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 NOISE LATHE WHERE ---
**Author:** ![Rebo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rebo/32/13005_2.png) [@Rebo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rebo)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9609 "2023-03-09T13:03:15Z")
Wordle 628 4/6\* ⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛ ⬛🟨⬛⬛🟩 ⬛⬛⬛🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 SALET PROVE QUIRE We haven’t had a q word for a while… WHERE ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9610 "2023-03-09T13:05:20Z")
Wordle 628 3/6 🟨🟨⬜🟩⬜ ⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 HEART SHORE WHERE ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9611 "2023-03-09T13:06:21Z")
> [@Rebo](#): > > We haven’t had a q word for a while… I thought we just recently had a word that ended with que. I want to say pique, maybe? I could be misremembering. ---
**Author:** ![Rebo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rebo/32/13005_2.png) [@Rebo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rebo)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9612 "2023-03-09T13:14:38Z")
Link to the newly minted Quordle thread! [https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quordle-for-people-who-find-wordle-to-be-too-easy](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quordle-for-people-who-find-wordle-to-be-too-easy) ---
**Author:** ![chiliwillybing](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chiliwillybing/32/12394_2.png) [@chiliwillybing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiliwillybing)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9613 "2023-03-09T13:14:49Z")
I think it was SQUAT ---
**Author:** ![Rebo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rebo/32/13005_2.png) [@Rebo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rebo)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9614 "2023-03-09T13:15:25Z")
Well, I’ve slept since then! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9615 "2023-03-09T13:46:09Z")
> [@Author\_Balk](#): > > If anyone cares about the best word for algorithms. NYT added more words to the possible word list. Now TARSE moves into first place. SALET drops to second. This can give 3.4140. I’m interested, because I’ve thought a bit about the choice of starting words. There’s a lot to be said for having R in one’s starting word, because it’s appeared more often in Wordle solutions than any other consonant. Not having it in my first word was my only gripe with SLANT, which I’d used for most of a year, hence my switch to SLART. Another thing I pay attention to is where the letters most frequently show up in a word: for those of us not in hard mode, greens are way better than yellows. And you don’t need to run the numbers to realize that the most likely place to see an E in a 5-letter word is in the fifth slot, usually as a silent E. So that’s another place where TARSE has an edge over SALET. If I get tired of SLART, I might try TARSE. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9616 "2023-03-09T13:48:28Z")
Wordle 628 4/6\* ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩 🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜🟨🟨⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Scoredle 4/6\* 14,855 ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩 ARISE (122) 🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩 ROUTE (26) ⬜🟨🟨⬜🟩 MERDE (3) 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 WHERE The most interesting thing of today’s game for me was that MERDE was allowed as a word! ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9617 "2023-03-09T13:54:41Z")
Technically speaking, if you’re trying to optimize non-hard mode, you would pretty much never repeat a green or yellow letter from your first word in your second word. Instead, you should be checking 10 different letters every time and going for the 3. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9618 "2023-03-09T14:02:47Z")
> [@chiliwillybing](#): > > I think it was SQUAT It was. But it was the first Q word since the NYT took over. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9619 "2023-03-09T14:34:48Z")
Maybe so in most cases, but not all. There’s the _process_ of going for the 3. Say I have three yellows in my first word. There will be 32 ways I can arrange those letters so that none of them are in the same position as they were. That’s a _lot_ of arrangements to check for viable words. And only after I’ve done that do I have a sense of _which_ letters I might be checking for on my second word. (This happened to me just yesterday. Long discussion about this below. While I’m assuming that it’s March 9th or 10th everywhere by now, given the time of day, I’m hiding it anyway just in case it’s still the 8th somewhere.) But if I’ve got one green and two yellows, then there are only _seven_ ways to arrange them so that the green letter is in the same place but the yellows are both moved. It’s a lot easier to look at 7 arrangements than 32 to see what words might fit, and I can be a lot more thorough in my looking. And I can more easily tailor my second word to the usually fairly small set of possibilities those seven arrangements turned up. > **Summary** > > So yesterday, SLART gave me the L,A,R but all in the wrong positions. I came up with about two dozen possible solutions that fit what I knew from SLARET, then eliminated a few that had already been used. But that still left me with ~20 possible solutions, plus of course the possibility that I’d overlooked a few. > > I made a list of how often the letters other than L,A,R appeared, and I couldn’t come up with a good word to include the most common of those without repeating letters I’d used in my starting word. > > I could’ve eliminated consonants that AFAICT weren’t in any possible solutions, but why bother? So I turned to looking at where L,A,R appeared in my possible solutions. L was mostly in the 5th slot, A in the 2nd and 4th, R in the first and third. So CORAL was about as good a second word as I could come up with, it hit the O which was in 6 solutions, and C which was in 3. And I’d eliminate a lot of solutions based on positioning of the L,A,R. > > And that worked. After CORAL (which gave me a shot at the 2), I was down to REGAL and RENAL, and that was an easy choice. So in that case, it made more sense to tilt more towards eliminating words based on the possible positions of the yellow letters I had, than to eliminate a whole new set of five letters. Most of the time, I go with eliminating five new letters, but there are situations where it’s not the best play. For my starting word, yesterday was one of them. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9620 "2023-03-09T14:43:32Z")
Wordle 628 4/6 ⬛⬛🟩⬛⬛ 🟨🟩⬛⬛⬛ ⬛🟩🟩🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 STEAL RHINO CHEER WHERE ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604/9621 "2023-03-09T14:52:56Z")
> [@Rebo](#): > > We haven’t had a q word for a while… We had SQUAT back on 03 March. Before that I think was last October, with QUIRK on the 19th. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604.md?page=480) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wordle-a-strangely-compelling-word-game-part-1/956604.md?page=482)