r/wordle

These five words contain every letter in the alphabet except for Q. Using them as my guesses, Wordle basically becomes an anagram game. I wrote a little Python script that gives me every combination of letters I feed it (with an option to test out doubles if I only have 3 or 4 letters). Usually, though, I don’t have to use all five guess and I can figure it out without the Python. Kind of a brute force strategy but it keeps the streak alive.

Spoilers for 1,885 below, all tagged.

I ran all 19 openers from the NYT's reader chart against the answer to 1,885 through TurnWord Word Bot, an AI-trained solver I've been building, and counted how many words were still possible after guess one. Starting pool: 13k five-letter words.

Words left standing after the opening guess:

• Narrowed most: >!IRATE (5 left), ORATE (6), TRACE (10), TRAIN (16)!<
• Middle: >!STARE (30), SLATE (65), TARPS (73), ADIEU (161)!<
• Narrowed least: >!STEAL (330), PLACE (484), AUDIO (1,187), CLASP (roughly 1,900)!<

Worth saying clearly: none of these are bad openers. All 19 solved, and the spread was only >!two to four guesses — the two sharpest got there in two, fourteen in three, and the three loosest in four!<. >!PLACE left 484 words on the table and still finished in three.!< A big pool going into guess two isn't trouble; it just means the second guess does more of the work.

Two things that did surprise me:

Grey letters carry the load. &gt;!CLASP came back completely blank — no greens, no yellows — and that "failure" still killed 85% of the list.!< A whiff is information.

Letter coverage isn't elimination. &gt;!AUDIO covers four vowels and left 1,187 words alive. TRACE covers two and left 10.!< Knowing which letters are absent narrows far less than knowing where a letter sits.

So the useful question for an opener isn't "how many common letters does it have," it's "how many words does each possible result kill." Those rank differently — but on a day like 1,885, almost anything gets you home.

Drop your usual opener below and I'll run it against 1,885 for you. Or run it yourself — the bot's at turnword.com/apps/word-game-bot, free and no signup.

https://preview.redd.it/gvy1qe0ocqjh1.png?width=920&format=png&auto=webp&s=6b3e6a9c353995cfad282dae5c4998199ba11623

I don't get Wordle Bot. Even when I get the word in 3 a few times per week, Wordle Bot ranks me fairly low, like 66, on Skill and Luck, and ALWAYS a lot lower than it ranks itself. 😂 It's both funny and confounding.

In the paid version of the app? Thanks!

1884 - after 1042 games I added a new word to my second guess strategy. It’s been quite a while since that happened.
I have had the same starting word for a long time. I have a list of second guesses based on the that word. It’s pretty extensive, but I had to add another one today.

I mean never failed a single game, not failed but still have 100%.

I just got into Wordle about a month ago and had a 29 day streak (even got the infamous p-word). I typically use the same 2-3 words to start, which are comprised of 10-15 unique letters, no matter what letters are revealed early on (with exceptions, of course). But one day I came across a post where someone said it's boring to use the same starting words and suggested that people should switch it up. That got in my head so I started switching it up and, for a few days, I started entering the first word that came to mind as the first word. I did that today and started with a pretty bad initial word and continued to play pretty fast. I lost my streak and I am now bummed. Sorry for my rant. No one else understands.

I cannot open the wordle connections strands or any nyt games website. Is it a me problem? Pls I'll lose my streak

Those letters use all the vowels and entire upper keyboard row, and don’t repeat letters. It intentionally ‘burns’ guesses and disregards letter placement, but I can usually guess correctly in one or two guesses after.

I’m not sure if there’s a ‘meta’ strategy, but for whatever reason this has always felt like the right thing to do. Anyone else play similarly? I feel someone needs to invent a five-vowel word for an optimal first guess.

https://preview.redd.it/iiffnraqrmih1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=e993cd6cfe51a827e6a16e217dba16ba79ae6b90

Come on, i know there's at least one person who uses THAT as their starting word, you enter it every day, waiting for it to happen, so when you got this as the result from your first guess, you must have go "NOOOOOO!!!!, SO CLOSE!!!!"

We have a guy in our Wordle group that always wins in 3 tries. Is he a genius or is that fairly common in other groups? The rest of us in the group usually get it in 4-5 tries with 3 & 6 being outliers.