Yes, @Isamu, please use spoiler tags!
I did…
RATIO
PINES
BLIND
UNIFY
It was a tough one. Mostly because it was skimpy on the “common” letters.
whoops
Got it in four:
Weigh
Aloud
Antsy
Unify
I would’ve guessed “unity” but the T in “antsy” ruled that out.
I’ve learned to stay away from this thread in the latter part of my west coast day. After midnight here, I do the puzzle and then return to this thread.
Thanks to all who keep using the spoiler tags. Oh, and…
Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s to a good 2022 to us all.
Got it in three. Perhaps the Jameson’s had something to do with it.
STONE
CHURN
UNIFY
Wow. This one was hard for me. I got it in 6.
WRIST
HONEY
SMEAR
LYRES
PEARS
REBUS
I am going to determine a better strategy.
Ratio
Redux
Rebus
Got it in 5:
pulse
adore
wrist
retry
rebus
Got it in 3!
RATIO
RUNES
REBUS
So far that starting word has been helping.
5 - but my 4th guess was a mistake since I kept one yellow letter in position (walked away for a few minutes and took a guess without thinking it through). I’ve decided I’m going to keep playing “easy” for 10 games (I’m up to 6 so far), then switch to hard.
SWEAT
CHOIR
URGES
LURES
REBUS
Sorry! Originally posted unblurred!
Got it in 3 today, January 1st. I got very lucky with my first word choice. It left me unsure if should start trying double letters and/or less common letters right away. In some of the paths other people have tried on the earlier puzzles, I saw them start in on that kind of thing a lot earlier than I normally do.
My path today:
RATES
REINS
REBUS
Happy New Year, everybody!
More than once in your path. I saw you reuse letters that had already been ruled out (shown in grey in your earlier guesses).
I guessed the position of three letters quite early on, but couldn’t think of a word with them in the right position until the very last attempt, so just took a few guesses to cancel letters.
SHUNT
LOUSE
FUMES
UPEND
NEXUS
REBUS
And not using letters that were shown to have been in the solution.
Got it in three today…
SMART
ROILS
REBUS
I get this tiny spark of proprietary pride every time someone lists their solution starting with MY suggested word. 
Now I just have to figure out how to word this accomplishment when it comes time to post my obituary.
As to general strategy – I’ve come up with three words that cover all the vowels, all the letters I’ve seen heading the ‘most common letters’ lists, and no repeated letters among them. Basically, those three words will reveal the presence of 15 out of the 26 letters.
Would it be better to simply use a set of words like that to start each new puzzle? Or are you better off to tweak your choices based on the feedback of each word as you go?
The happy accidents of getting a placement correct can be a great help, of course.
Yes I do know that. Not the best strategy there but I knew that at the time and actually I was referring to something else — similar to RATIO, but not just 1 word, what 3 words use up the 15 most frequent letters?
If I start by playing 3 well-chosen words then ideally I should have all 5 letters flagged green or yellow in the game. Or, at least 4 or minimally 3. I’d then be able to guess the word by at least my 4th guess, or better yet my 3rd or even 2nd.
I was reading an article about Morse code. Samuel Morse had to determine the letters most frequently used in order to give them the easiest codes. So from this article, Grammar Articles | Thesaurus.com, and more specifically this table in that article,
we see the 15 most frequently used letters are, in order,
E A R I O T N S L C U D P M H
Here we see that RATIO is an ideal starting word. Hello again, @StarvingButStrong!
My 3 starting words could be
R A T I O
C L E A N
S T U M P, which leaves out D H
Or they could be
T E A R S
B I S O N
C L U M P, which also leaves out D H
Are there three 5-letter words that exhaust all 15 of those letters?
To review, without this new strategy I’ve guessed correctly in these number of guesses for the 8 words since @Briny_Deep shared this game with us back on 24 December (when I didn’t reveal the spoiler):
R E B U S — got it in 6 guesses
U N I F Y — got it in 3 guesses
T A P I R — got it in 3 guesses
A S I D E — got it in 4 guesses
F E R R Y — N/A, I saw the spoiler
A C U T E — got it in 6 guesses
P I C K Y — got it in 5 guesses
W E A R Y — got it in 3 guesses
With this new strategy I would have had:
R E B U S — I’d have 4 of the 5 letters in rebus, R E U S
U N I F Y — 3, U N I
T A P I R — 5
A S I D E — 5
F E R R Y — only 2, the E and one R
A C U T E — 5
P I C K Y — 3, P I C
W E A R Y — 3, E A R
I’d be in pretty good shape to get the word by the 4th or maybe 5th guess. I’d almost certainly not ever need all 6 attempts.
So, yeah, perhaps a new strategy is in order.
Got it on the fourth word today.
CHOIR
RETAG
REDUB
REBUS
Got it in 3:
RATES
RENDS
REBUS
Confession time. I am using word lists and Excel filtering to maintain my streak. In today’s example, after the first guess I compiled a list of words that started with “RE” (having guessed that E would go in the second position) and ending with “S” – disregarding words containing the incorrect letters, “RENDS” seemed the most plausible although “REINS” would have made as much sense or more. Then another filtering for the additional bad letters, and only one common word was left.
The TROLL puzzle should have given me more confidence, though. My first guess had been STARE, which led me to try “TR” in the starting position and “O” as the vowel; the answer fell into my lap without looking at a word list.