Wordle 282 3/6*
ORATE
SPOIL
FOUND
I was just trying to eliminate more letters in my third guess, and got lucky
I don’t like these “stem” words. Would be a better game if they limited it to a choice of three unusual initial letters.
Took me five, but there were options left on the table. Enough! Enough with these rough, tough, cough-inducing hard-fought sloughs of a puzzle. (Yes, that is a little stretched.)
Wordle 282 6/6*
Barely made it.
Then don’t play hard mode and eliminate them with a guess like FACTS, if you don’t want to roll the dice and take a stab in the dark. There is no need to make this game any easier, IMHO. I gambled and I lost. I could have gotten it in four, but decided to take my chances and wound up with six.
It’s obviously a good game if you are still playing it, like millions, and are discussing it with others.
I’d be okay if they used tougher words. Maybe AALII, FIZZY, LYMPH ( which they almost did) or YUMMY? But I think they would prefer millions play and like it.
Wordle 282 6/6*
Phew. I should think longer about some of my guesses.
STARE
INDOW
NODDY
MONDO
POUND
FOUND
Phew indeed. Was really a shot in the dark at the last. I just didn’t believe they would use the first word that turned up in the list of Possibles. What would have been their evil fun in that?
Wordle 282 6/6*
IRATE
CLOUD
SOUND
MOUND
POUND
FOUND
Tomorrow’s. Unexpectedly got it right sooner than it started out like.
Wordle 283 4/6
One of these things is not like the other. AALII? WTF is that? I would be surprised if the other ones are not on the target word list. I could check the original list – and I will – but I won’t post about it. Which actually brings me to an interesting idea: how about an Obscurdle, where the target word list is the allowable guesses words minus the current target words?
I think #282 is a good counterexample:
I started off with my usual opening of ADIEU, followed by STONY. So I had the N in the right place, and also the O,U,D. I correctly surmised that I had a word ending in OUND.
Okay, but which one? I’d used S, so SOUND was out. But BOUND, FOUND, HOUND, MOUND, POUND, ROUND, and WOUND were live possibilities. If I were allowed unlimited guesses in hard mode, I’d get the answer in somewhere between 3 and 9 tries, with an expected value of 6.
Thanks, but no thanks: if I can find some words that can’t be solutions, but do use a lot of those initial consonants, I can wrap this up in five tries for sure, maybe four if I’m lucky or can tip the odds my way
After some thought, I came up with FRUMP, which the game allowed: four of the seven consonants in one word gave me a .571 chance of getting it in four, assuming I was right about the OUND ending, and certainty of getting it in five.
So I tossed away a small chance of solving it in 3 (though from a mathematician’s POV, I even did that, since my first 3 turns proved what the answer had to be) but guaranteed that I’d solve it in 4 or 5, rather than having equal chances of taking anywhere between 3 and 9 turns to solve it.
These are obscure words for Scrabble players which use lots of vowels. It is a type of tree in Hawaii.
Wordle 282 5/6
As mentioned I generally play as if I were in Hard Mode but don’t have HM activated, precisely for cases like today’s. Gotta have that ‘test word’ capacity available.
OUTER
POUND
SMASH
BEFIT
FOUND
Ah. Or should I say AA? (Another obscure Hawaiian Scrabble word. That one I know.) Your other examples are pretty normal words, though. Like I said, I would not be surprised to see them in Wordle.
Obviously we’ve got a philosophical difference here. For me, it isn’t about making the game easier, it’s about attacking a problem with intelligence. IMHO, if I can solve a problem more quickly by thinking it through intelligently rather than by trying a bunch of different things at random, that’s good. YMMV and clearly does, and that’s OK.
But I am attacking it with intelligence by using a word that tests as many consonants as possible instead of taking a stab in the dark (except this time, when I did go the latter way.) What are you talking about? I’m saying in this instance I took a more gambling approach, rather than a reasoned approach. Eliminating “stem” words makes the game easier, rather than having people use logic and testing words to attack the various possible stem combinations. The intelligent approach to a word like _OUND is not to try FOUND POUND HOUND ROUND SOUND etc but rather use an interim word like HARPS to logically deduce the answer. That’s intelligence, too, and moreso, I’d say, than eliminating words with too many so-called “stems.” I mean, this game is already enough of a silly guessing game with little strategy as it is – why make it even easier?
So I’ve been trying, and finally solved, a game called semantle that gives you as many tries as you want to find a word based on its semantic connection to other words.
Here’s a description of it. I don’t think I recommend it, but I enjoyed it.
I solved Semantle #59 in 80 guesses. My first guess had a similarity of 5.93. My first word in the top 1000 was at guess #26. My penultimate guess had a similarity of 15.64. https://semantle.novalis.org/
Tomorrow’s Wordle, Today
Wordle 283 3/6
Wordle 283
TEACH
SHARK
SHALL
After the second guess, there were very few words that could have possibly fit.
That was… weird. It was hyper frustrating until I stumbled on a word in the top thousand on guess #46, and then I ended up getting the answer by guess #61. But yeah… I don’t think I’d recommend it. I didn’t feel accomplished in any way. Neat idea, though.
Wordle 283 3/6
CLASH
STALE
STALL
I thought of STALL quickly, but then kept looking until I found STALE. Should have gone with my first instinct.
Wordle 283 4/6
RATIO
LEACH
SHAWL
SHALL