WORDLE: Seven Things We Learned Analyzing 515 Million Wordles NYT article

[IcyPeas]

Free NYT article below.

Millions of people play Wordle every day, and share, discuss and debate how they tried to win.

For the first time, we’ve analyzed how players performed in half a billion of those Wordle games over the past year and compared their results with the strategies that our WordleBot recommends.

Here are seven things we learned:

1. Of the top 30 starting words, ADIEU is the most popular but least efficient.

Many, many words have been written about the best opening word for Wordle. Answering this question was, in fact, one of the motivations behind WordleBot’s development. In its robot brain, a handful of words — SLATE, CRANE, TRACE — are given the bot’s seal of approval as leading to the solution in the fewest guesses on average.

But for human Wordle players, the most popular opening word by some margin is ADIEU, with AUDIO, another four-vowel word, not far behind.

https://web.archive.org/web/20231217194006/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/17/upshot/wordle-bot-year-in-review.html

[lastlib]

1. My usual starting words are STEAL, STALE, AND LEAST.

They have two vowels (by far the two most commonly used in English) and three of the five most commonly used consonants; and "ST" is the most common letter pair in English. So those three words cover a whole lot of bases.

[BigmanPigman]

7. Mine is STARE

and I am always in the 90%. I think teaching 1st graders "word study" for 15 years has helped a lot. Also, taking a risk knowing with a word that you already know will not work but could give you more useful clues in the elimination process.

[likesmountains 52]

8. Mine are

Lousy, Trade, and Mince. Sometimes I switch Mince out if there is no E. Been working pretty well!

[Mz Pip]

2. ALIEN and CANOE

are my start words.

[KarenS]

3. train n/t

[viva la]

4. I keep changing up my start word.

Just for fun. For me, the last letter is the important one, so I try to end the start word with T or N or D or S.

[bamagal62]

5. Mine depends on my mood.

Sometimes I use a strategy word like aisle or spire. But, for me it’s more fun and often more successful if I just go
With the first word that pops into my head.
I like the challenge of seeing what I can do with it.

[mucifer]

6. me too. It's unpredictable

[UTUSN]

9. My first 3 tries today were total fails, freaked me out! First time ever. Managed to get it in 5.

[JoseBalow]

10. I use ROATE for straight Wordle

but for others, the Quordles and Octordles, I use TRAIN then LOUSE

Works pretty well for me

https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html
https://www.quordle.com/#/
https://www.quordle.com/#/sequence
https://www.britannica.com/games/octordle/daily
https://www.britannica.com/games/octordle/daily-sequence
https://www.britannica.com/games/octordle/daily-rescue
https://squareword.org/

[Emrys]

11. I always start with a word ending in E

It's the most common letter in English, and it's surprising how often it ends up being the last letter.

Then it's a joust between me and Wordlebot. It doesn't like some of my choices, as I always like to choose a word that might be the solution whereas it sometimes throws in a word that's an impossible solution but it judges "more efficient" in eliminating words. Then I think it cheats sometimes, claiming it disregarded my previous choices in beating me - oh really?

I haven't had a one-try solution since I started checking out Wordlebot (I did have one before then), but it would be fun to see it seethe and shut it up.

[XanaDUer2]

12. Kick