The Wordle thread (with spoilers!)

[heltenjon]

Having now tried it a little, I have one criticism of Wordlebot: its strategy and recommendations are based on knowing exactly which words are possible solutions (a much smaller pool of words than the ones that are valid guesses). So the other day, for instance, it knew that the solution could not be BOYAR, even though that is a valid word, simply because it's not in the list of Wordle solutions. That's not something a human player could know for sure without cheating, and it affects the optimal strategy.

[offtopic]Slightly offtopic - Reminds me of Nikkabot, the automatic Wordfeud bot who knows all the allowed words. Can be beat, apparantly, but not by me.[/offtopic]

[cat]

295 I got with 2, today (296) with 4. It think this was a nice word, today.

Spoiler

Q is a fun character, considering how it changes U from vowel to consonant. I'm looking for the day when QUEUE will be the word 

[close]

[Stupot]

My average took a bit of a hit in the past ten days, but it's not as bad as I was expecting.

No. guesses	No. of times	Points
1	0	0
2	5	10
3	20	60
4	32	128
5	14	70
6	9	54
	Total	322
	/80 days	4.025

[Snarky]

Yeah, that's looking very decent, Stu. Especially on hard mode.

Another 4 today.

Wordle 297 4/6

⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨
🟨🟩⬜🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I wasn't very happy with it, but Wordlebot says it wasn't too bad, mostly bad luck.

Skill 91/100
Luck 43/100

My lowest-rated guess was my second one. I think it's because I have a tendency to overlook a certain letter.

Spoiler

I tend not to prioritize L very high, but after RTSN it is one of the most common consonants, and S is less common in Wordle than in English because it very rarely uses plurals or inflected verbs in the solution. So I played ASTER (for the S) when LATER would have been a better guess.

[close]

BTW, the skill rating in Wordlebot goes from 0 as "pass" (play a word you already tried) to 99 or 100 as the "optimal answer" (the one Wordlebot would have picked), measured in expected/average remaining steps to the solution given that guess. The luck rating measures whether the guess moved fewer or more steps closer to the solution than expected (averaged across all possible solutions, where 100 is the luckiest possible outcome and 0 the unluckiest possible; and 50 probably the expected outcome).

[Stupot]

Bad news. I had a panic last night when my phone was on less than 1gb remaining. Went through deleting clearing data, deleting apps and, unfortunately, clearing my Safari cache.

I’m proud to say that after 82 games I still had a 100% record and a fairly decent average, but now I have to start from scratch.

[Stupot]

Noooooo. Can it get any worse?

My first game after clearing my cache ended in total disaster and I had my first ever fail. (#300)

I won’t yet post what the grid looked like because it could give something away. I’m pretty gutted right now.

[Snarky]

Ouch! Commiserations. 

I did pretty well today, getting lucky on my second guess. (And could again discard one possibility as a word not fit to print in the NYT.)

Wordle 299 3/6

⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
⬜🟩🟨🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Skill 90/100
Luck 66/100

Hope I won't flame out on #300 as well!

[cat]

Got it in 3 as well.

Spoiler

STARE-CHILE-MINCE
After SAUTE not long ago another cooking related word. Finally this Canadian cookbook I own pays off 

[close]

[Mouth for war]

4th try today :-)

[Snarky]

Wordle 300 5/6

⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩
🟩⬜🟩⬜⬜
🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Skill 83/100
Luck 47/100

Not great today. I tried to be sneaky and ended up playing myself.

My first two guesses were practically perfect, and left me with only six likely possibilities:

Spoiler

After CRANE and STALK, I was left with SHADE, SHAME, SHAPE, SHAVE, SPADE, SUAVE (though of these I overlooked SHAVE as a possibility).

[close]

Now I let myself be influenced by knowing that Stupot had lost the round, and did something stupid:

Spoiler

I went directly for what I thought was the least likely word using the most rare letters, SUAVE. Not only was this terrible strategically, since it gave me almost no information if not correct, it didn't even make sense as something that could have led to Stupot losing the round, since it's when there are many possible choices for one letter that hard mode becomes especially hard. Therefore the logical inference would have been that the answer was probably of the form SHA_E. The smart play here would have been something like DUMPS or HEMP, which would have guaranteed a win in 4.

After SUAVE didn't pan out I was left with SHADE, SHAME, SHAPE, SPADE, and got it on the second try. (Though again my first guess was not ideal: SPADE would have guaranteed a win in 5, which I didn't notice.)

[close]

[Stupot]

It was a tricky one for such a normal word. Or perhaps because it’s such a normal word.

Not until after pasting the below grid did it occur to me that my setting would have reset to easy mode (if someone’s on hard mode, it shows an asterisk).

Spoiler

I thought I’d go with a word with lots of vowels. Turned out to be a bad idea, especially as none of them were ‘E’.

Wordle 300 X/6

⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ouija
🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜ after
⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩 plane
⬜🟩🟩🟨🟩 chase
🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩 shade
🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩 shake

By the time I got to the 5th guess, it was just a lucky dip between shade, shave, shake and shame. I had two shots, and missed them both.

[close]

[cat]

It also took me 5 guesses today.

Spoiler

After STARE got me 3 letters already, I chose SHAPE next (which was not so great, it would have been better to go with SPADE here, as Snarky has pointed out). So next were pure guesses with SHADE, SHAKE and SHAME.

[close]

[Stupot]

I’m not sure if this is real but it’s funny if it is:
https://twitter.com/ihaveahat2/status/1514973672120848388?s=20=6W1bTifAGc83x7-D5_ZcaA

[cat]

There was a guy who purposely got 6 all black rows in hard mode. He had to put quite some effort into it to make it happen:
https://twitter.com/DanBecklloyd/status/1496946861466615809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Today, I got it with my 4th try.

Spoiler

After I got just an E that was not at the end, I had the feeling there would be a double E. I was right and got it after BLEED and QUEEN.

[close]

[cat]

After I was lucky with 2 guesses for #302 and 3 for #303, I totally messed up today. Has been quite a while that I was not able to solve it. It was not a difficult word, just so many options.

[Snarky]

Yikes! Bad luck, cat!

Since #300 I have been 4/6 each day (I haven't been very disciplined, and have played hunches rather than the smartest plays), until today when I got pretty lucky on the second guess (it was a strategic one that paid off), leaving me with only one possible answer:

Wordle 304 3/6

⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜
⬜🟩⬜⬜🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Skill 90/100
Luck 67/100

Spoiler

CARED, TOWNY, FOYER

[close]

This is also the first time I've beaten Wordlebot, which took 5/6 today.

[CaptainD]

I also got today's in 3.

Spoiler

FRAUD, FILER, FOYER

[close]

[Stupot]

Ahh unlucky cat.

I got #304 in 4, but I also got #303 in 2.

It’s almost midnight in Japan, so I’ll be able to play #305 shortly.

[Update: #305 - 4 tries]

[Mouth for war]

Also messed it up today :-/

[CaptainD]

#305 took me 5 guesses