Winning Wordle

&gt; <i>(2) What is a winning strategy I can memorize?</i><p>&gt; <i>Q: What simple strategy guarantees a win within 6 guesses?</i><p>I&#x27;ve seen a lot of analyses of Wordle that pose this question, and I feel like these are not people who play Wordle (not unlikely - these are seemingly people more interested in analysing the game from a statistical standpoint than simply playing directly).<p>But while the answer to this question is interesting enough, it&#x27;s not <i>that</i> interesting. People I&#x27;ve spoken to who play have zero interest in winning in 5 or 6 guesses - in fact most would consider a score of 6&#x2F;6 a loss (or at least a relatively bad score), unless it was a particularly tricky word.<p>&gt; <i>(1) If I win in two guesses, am I good or lucky?</i><p><i>Q: What first guess maximizes the number of guaranteed wins on the second guess?</i><p><i>Q: What first guess maximizes the number of expected wins on the second guess?</i><p>&gt; <i>The probability of winning in two guesses is about 2%, so the answer is: mostly lucky.</i><p>These - and the follow-ups I was hoping for for 3, 4 &amp; 5 guesses respectively - are much more interesting questions.<p>* Yes I can just clone this and edit to find these things out (&amp; probably will later this week) but I&#x27;m just commenting on my confusion around why there&#x27;s so much focus on the least interesting part of a problem.

Once I realized that solving in one guess or two doesn&#x27;t take any particular skill, I began to wonder what &quot;winning&quot; Wordle really means.<p>It&#x27;s a game that you play for fun. If folks want to analyze the dictionaries to develop their strategy because it&#x27;s fun for them, then they&#x27;re doing it right. Not cheating.<p>If you prize Wordle solution patterns that are symmetrical or aesthetically pleasing because it&#x27;s fun, then you&#x27;re doing it right.<p>If you try to see how many consecutive hard-mode guesses you can make with NO correct letters because it&#x27;s fun, then you&#x27;re doing it right.<p>If you try to see how far you can skew your distribution towards six without ever losing because it&#x27;s fun, then you&#x27;re doing it right.

A related question is: &quot;What is the smallest fixed set of guesses which always solve Wordle, narrowing down possible hidden words to just one?&quot;. So far the answer is 8: MODEL LEVIN TAPPA GRABS DURGY FLYTE CHAWK SPOOR [1].<p>Bringing this down to 5 would mean that one could always win at Wordle with the same set of 5 guesses. Seems unlikely that such a solution exists, but interesting question nonetheless.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;alexandres&#x2F;magicwordschallenge" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;alexandres&#x2F;magicwordschallenge</a>

There are probably hundreds of writeups on strategies to play Wordle. I play it for fun and I play it random. My first word is whatever comes to mind. I know I can increase my chances by selecting a word with more vowels in it but where is the fun in it. :-)<p>I once got it on second word - it was pure chance. I am now waiting for the day when I get it on the first attempt. :-)

My opener:<p>SOARE<p>CLINT<p>PUDGY<p>Developed it looking at the answer and guess lists and finding words that maximize frequency <i>and</i> placement. E.g. Y and E are very commonly seen in fifth position. No code, just excel and searching the word lists with regular expressions.<p>It&#x27;s so effective the game lost a lot of its fun :( I almost always get the answer on guess #4. The days I struggle and get it on guess 5 or 6 are fun though! :)

I also enjoyed this video from 3Blue1Brown about solving wordle with information theory:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;v68zYyaEmEA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;v68zYyaEmEA</a>

Wordle is the only thing I haven&#x27;t tried to outsmart by learning about its math, programming, and tricks that increase your chance of winning. I think those things take away all the joy that I get from Wordle.

I don&#x27;t have a problem with analyzing the dictionary, but analyzing the set of answers doesn&#x27;t sit right with me on the &quot;is this cheating?&quot; scale

FEAST<p>BRING<p>CHUMP<p>DOWLY<p>The first 1-3 words may &quot;strike&quot; early. But victory is inevitable it seems with those. They seem pretty durable against sneaky double-letter words too.<p>HANDY SWIFT GLOVE CRUMP seem to lack the concentration of &quot;quick strike&quot; letter combos onthe first two words (FEAST and BRING for me). Then CHUMP and DOWLY are &quot;cleanup&quot; guesses if not enough comes out of FEAST &#x2F; BRING.<p>But I don&#x27;t have math behind it so... what do I really know.

My stats:<p>1 - 0 (0%)<p>2 - 7 (17%)<p>3 - 13 (32%)<p>4 - 16 (39%)<p>5 - 4 (10%)<p>6 - 1 (2%)<p>lose - 0 (0%)<p>My strategy:<p>- Always start with the same word, one that has the most common letters<p>- Prefer more common letters to less common letters<p>- Prefer more common words to less common words<p>- Starting with round three, never guess until I know all possible common words<p>- Don&#x27;t repeat a letter unless the only other possible words are uncommon<p>- Prefer consonant combinations at the start of the word over staring with a vowel<p>- Never do plurals (I think the game does not use them)<p>A guiding principle is maximize learning at each round. I have a manual written process for listing all possible combinations at each step and iterating on each to find all possible words. I usually start that on the third round.<p>I&#x27;ve written a small program that takes a pattern (like ??EA?) and a list of eliminated letters and spits out all possible words. My wife says it&#x27;s cheating, so I rarely use it.<p>I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s cheating because it only saves me time going through all possible combinations on paper. I guess there&#x27;s some chance it will suggest a common word I would have never hit on manually.<p>I don&#x27;t deny that my high rate of second guess wins is partly luck. But I contend that the N is large enough by now that it&#x27;s at least partly my strategy.

Perhaps I&#x27;m mistaken, but from an interview with the game author, I gathered that you can use 10k+ words, only ~2300 of those being candidates for the winning word.<p>But the analysis only uses the latter subset. So in theory there could be a valid 5-letter that could be a good opener, even if it cannot be a winning word.

I saw ROATE PULIS CHYND mentioned here once and have been using it ever since. I find its mechanic precision and usefulness soothing, though it&#x27;s unhelpful on a few occasions.<p>It removes a lot of the fog of war and since it leaves me with few guesses remaining, keeps the game tense enough to be fun

It looks like Peter has assumed equal probability for each solution. It would be interesting to apply a probability distribution across the wordlist, assuming the editors pick the words manually. I think this plays into my strategy subconsciously when I’m solving them.

I don&#x27;t agree with Norvig here. The optimal strategy is to reduce the number of degrees of freedom in subsequent guesses as early as possible. Essentially, pick words that would earn you the lowest Scrabble scores.<p>I used to start with TEARS. Once I realized that they never used plurals, I switched to STARE, since putting the S at the end doesn&#x27;t appreciably lower the entropy. I usually end up winning with 3 guesses, which is the point where strategy starts to pay off. (I do agree with Peter that 2-guess wins are almost always due to luck.)

I like to ask my four year old for an opener word every morning. He usually just says “water!”, but the ensuing discussion often leads to a fun opener

Wordle is basically gambling, but like a lot of games of chance you can improve your odds using skill. A good vocabulary, good starter words, solid analytical skills. But peeking at the word list, players are often still left with three or four viable options after two or three guesses. Lucky guesses will result in completing the daily game in three or four tries, unlucky guesses will push this up.

I have blacklisted Wordle using app-blocking after spending nearly an hour on one, and consider my winning strategy now optimised.

I feel like my Python always gets better from reading Norvig&#x27;s notebooks. Didn&#x27;t know you could rename decorators!

It&#x27;s always enjoyable for me to go through Norvig&#x27;s python notebooks, because I always learn something new!

for the folks who love playing Wordle, you may also like playing the &quot;Mini&quot; crossword (available on NYT Games iOS app) which is free to play and available daily. Wordle has truly made me interested in word games and I&#x27;d love if you have any other recommendations.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;norvig&#x2F;pytudes&#x2F;issues&#x2F;118" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;norvig&#x2F;pytudes&#x2F;issues&#x2F;118</a><p>Norvig&#x27;s Sudoku solver inspired me to make my own Wordle solver last month

In the first section where &quot;world&quot; gives &quot;...gy&quot;. I&#x27;m stuck on trying to see why the d gave a y. What am I misreading?<p>Edit:. Ah, I was reversing which was the guess and which was the answer. Makes sense now.

I’ve lost completely my lust for Wordle after the NY Times acquisition. Don’t know exactly why. That said, I used to like to come up with my own strategies, to keep things interesting.

The dictionary seems to be from aspell. After a couple stock guesses, I can usually win in another turn or two using `aspell dump master` and some grepping.

What&#x27;s with the Wordle obsession? Why is everyone so into this? I don&#x27;t understand why this is sweeping the fucking nation right now.

<i>If I win in two guesses, am I good or lucky?</i><p><pre><code> FLOSS TEETH </code></pre> Instant win!

Haven&#x27;t lost a game yet using PENIS &#x2F; TOUCH as my first and second.

&quot;handy swift glove crump&quot; reminds me of &quot;correct horse battery staple&quot;

&gt;If I win in two guesses, am I good or lucky? ...The probability of winning in two guesses is about 2%, so the answer is: mostly lucky<p>&gt;What first guess maximizes the number of expected wins on the second guess? A: FILET gives you 57.5 expected wins (out of 2,315)<p>Note that 57.5 &#x2F; 2315 = 2.4%, so being &quot;good&quot; at the first word can only improve your chances of a two-guess win by at most ~20%. Not that much.<p>I believe that stat illuminates a MAJOR factor for why Wordle is so popular that I haven&#x27;t seen discussed yet: it&#x27;s a game of (almost) pure luck, that successfully gives every man, woman and child of diverse intelligence the perception of being very smart, occasionally. It&#x27;s a pat-on-the-back generator that works for everyone, not just those with high aptitude.<p>It&#x27;s a lottery ticket, if winning the lottery meant you could show off how smart you are.