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My lazy Wordle strategy: same words every time

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Re: My lazy Wordle strategy: same words every time

#131

Post by kilbuz »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #52
donarb wrote: post #31

My strategy is to never use the same start word, I like using a random word each time as that changes the path to solving. I might pick a random word from another open browser window, maybe from a news article or something like that. If I get stuck after the second or third try, I'll pick another random word, even if it contains a few discarded letters in order to ferret out 1 or 2 more valid letters. For me, the bes…

If my wife and I want to challenge ourselves, we'll start with the solution to the previous puzzle as our first guess.

You might like Hurdle, which is a play on this idea.

Re: My lazy Wordle strategy: same words every time

#132

Post by daem »

jmyeet wrote: post #116
thaumasiotes wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also toy around with Quordle where you have 9 guesses to find 4 words. That one's harder and the strategy is a little different. There I've pretty much settled on finding a set of 3 words that covers all vowels (and Y) and 9 of the most common consonants. Yes, in Quordle you're compelled to use a standard opening. Regardless of what you learn from early guesses, no followup can be more informative than just query…

There are lots of words like this and it affects Wordle too. Take SHA_E. You have SHAME, SHARE, SHAVE, SHALE, SHAKE and SHAPE. It's highly likely your earlier guesses haven't eliminated all of these. So what you have to do is recognize this situation and throw in a word with all of the possible missing letters to tell you which one is the right one. Obviously you need 2 guesses left at least for this to work. But I'v…

> I've noticed whoever chooses the word of the day for Worlde likes these types of words.

Josh Wardle said on a podcast[1] that him and his partner chose the set of words by taking all 5 letter words in the dictionary and filtering out the "bogus" ones. He then randomized the order of these words so that him and his partner could play. However, I'm not sure if the New York Times has changed how word selection works.

[1] https://syntax.fm/show/430/creator-of-wordle-josh-wardle

Re: My lazy Wordle strategy: same words every time

#133

Post by kilbuz »

twobitshifter wrote: post #75
phphphphp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, can you explain what you mean here: I play hard mode and I always get the word within 6 guesses — and I’m no savant, I’m an idiot, and I don’t cheat — no looking at the word list. The same is true for my friends who play on hard mode: no cheating, always finish. Why is luck required for hard mode?

I lost this week on FOYER without repeated letters, there are plenty of words with ER endings and O as a second letter. —- VOICE LONER TOWER JOKER POSER HOMER ——- The last two were unlikely to be the word, but I try to finish in only a few minutes and those popped to my head before foyer. But I could have guessed BOXER or DOPER or some other words I’m sure. When I’ve lost it’s usually because I have 3 letters and gue…

LOVER BOXER POWER CODER... broke my steak of 90...

Re: My lazy Wordle strategy: same words every time

#135

Post by amarant »

Interesting!

I have a similar strategy, I always start with

Blame Horny Cupid

The sequence has the upside of containing every vowel, without repeating a single character. Downside is it does not contain some pretty common consonants, I'm gonna have to try some of the sequences suggested in the post to compare what seems better now

Re: My lazy Wordle strategy: same words every time

#136

Post by shpx »

gizmo686 wrote: post #36
jeffbee wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you cheat by referring to the list of solution words. No strategy with a 6-guess worst case is possible without referring to that list.

How is that cheating? The dictionary is part of the game.

In the limit, if there was one day of Wordle left and you looked at what it was going to be and then told me that the optimal strategy of which words to guess is to just guess the solution as the first guess, that's cheating. Your "strategy" becomes a question of how well can you compress the list of solutions into the entropy allowed by how you chose to express your strategy, in this case "four 5-letter words" or somewhere between 20 and 94 bits of entropy[0].

[0] 4*5 assuming that 1 letter is one bit of entropy, which is a rule of thumb when you're compressing gigabytes of text to log2(26^(4*5)) if we just count the combinations of letters

Re: My lazy Wordle strategy: same words every time

#138

Post by williamscales »

boulos wrote: post #123

Huh. Am I alone in thinking that hard mode (must reuse previous letters) should be the only option? Being able to choose a completely different word to fill in the gaps seems overly easy... (There's still luck, but it's vastly easier).

I completely agree. I didn't realize that anyone played in easy mode and talked about it in public.

Re: My lazy Wordle strategy: same words every time

#139

Post by williamscales »

jeffbee wrote: post #34
shawnz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always win even in hard mode with perfect play: https://www.poirrier.ca/notes/wordle-optimal/ > In hard mode, Wordle can be solved in 3.5076 guesses on average (with 6 guesses at worst, i.e. 100% of the time). Or, with a different decision tree, it can be solved with a slightly worse average, but always within 5 guesses

Only if you cheat by referring to the list of solution words. No strategy with a 6-guess worst case is possible without referring to that list.

I think most wordle players would know the entire dictionary. It's quite a restricted wordlist in fact.

Re: My lazy Wordle strategy: same words every time

#140

Post by CamperBob2 »

boulos wrote: post #123

Huh. Am I alone in thinking that hard mode (must reuse previous letters) should be the only option? Being able to choose a completely different word to fill in the gaps seems overly easy... (There's still luck, but it's vastly easier).

I find it's actually easier in hard mode, because it keeps me from making dumb mistakes.
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