The ultimate solution for WORDLE

[AribertDeckers]

I toyed a bit with WORD MASTER, a WORDLE look-alike...

You have to read till the bottom to get the real fun!


The ultimate solution for WORDLE

WORDLE is a hyped word guessing game. After its appearance a number of look-alikes showed up in the Net, mainly because of the annoying number of only 1 guess per day with the original WORDLE.

I chose the more interesting WORD MASTER:

  https://octokatherine.github.io/word-master/

At the beginning I was quite successful, until it knocked me out after I had made 46 hits in a streak:



After that it grew very annoying. Some really ugly words showed up, like:

DITZY
SCUFF
AVOWS
SNARL
VEINS
YACHT
QUAKE
PLEAT
FEMUR
AGAVE
QUIET
ZESTY
BOOTH
TRULL
ITEMS
LULLS
ELOPE
DOZEN
VEERS
TRITE
UDDER
SQUAD
NINJA
REEFY
GOOEY


So I tried to fine-tune a bit. No chance. When looking for word-lists I found articles about choosing the best first word. These are 2 of the few I read:

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/wordle-tips-and-strategies-the-best-start-words-to-keep-your-streak/
https://www.polygon.com/gaming/22884031/wordle-game-tips-best-first-guess-5-letter-words

I looked at suggested words like

    roate
and
    raise

But they are crap. Why so? Because they dramatically spoil the chances to solve the quiz. And this for a simple reason. The suggestions are about getting as many vowels in 1 word. But exactly this is the biggest mistake one can make.

Just take a word - and it has 3 vowels. What next!?

a e i o u

Having used 3 of them leaves only 2 for the next guesses. Imagine a word. How can a word be made up? Of course it needs at least 1 vowel.

1. guess: 3 vowels
2. guess: 2 vowels

Too bad. Now the next guess is forced to use again an already used vowel. And, in so many cases, one or more already used consonants.

But the quiz depends on the player getting knowledge about the word. Each try should gain maximal knowledge.

1 word = 5 letters. So it should be 5 NEW letters. But each double sets us back by 1 chance.

I fiddled a bit with the words I used. BLIMP, I found out, is a very neat word, because it connects letters which are hard to get. VEGAN also is interesting, but VEGAS seems to be a bit more useful.

PILOT, like VEGAS, uses TWO vowels, which is bad. BLIMP uses only 1 vowel, which is much better.

I ended up with about 17 or 18 new letters in 4 tries.



But 4x5 = 20. If I were to find 20 letters, this would give me a much better chance to make a final guess.

I found this set to be a maximal solution:

GATCH
BLIMP
FUNKS
ROVED


GATCH and ROVED are strange. Normally I never would have found them. But - using ROVER - I discovered that ROVED, too, is an accepted guess. And GATCH is a replacement for WATCH. It only needed some experimenting to find that.

The advantage of GATCH over WATCH is simple: "G" appears more often that "W", and so can be combined easier.

The strategy is NOT to directly guess the word right, but to get A SET OF WORDS, which TOGETHER, piece for piece, form a comb, which - without any overlap by doubles - gets the maximum of letters (that is 20) in 4 tries.

3 tries is not enough, but 4 tries fit quite well.

Here you can see one of my early tries:



Don't look at the top. Concentrate on the bottom part, on the typewriter layout. D and B are omitted. That is bad, because they appear often. Also, look at the vowels: Using 4 tries - and having 5 vowels - shows, that 1 of the tries may have 2 vowels. Using Y or J is not a good idea, because they are quite rare.

The result of a guess is twofold:

1. It shows what is in the word to guess, and

2. it shows, what is not in the word.

In the example you see 2 complete failures; guess 3 and guess 4. And you see that only 3 letters as the total result are very meager as a base for guessing the word.

Now comes the genius part: Look at the letters about which we have no knowledge. In the example it is

Q W Y D J Z X B

Y and W are funny chaps. It is not so very complicated to find words for them, with Y being the much easier task.

Here is an example with horrible word DITZY:




Here you see an early experiment:



Similar words can spoil everything.


I already was quite good with 18 hits out of 20 letters. But looking at the bottom you see 2 letters omitted: B and K. And you see, how one is fooled by similar words. Each try, exchanging 1 letter, is one lost try, which will kick you out. Which means: to invest 4 guesses for harvesting 20 letters is good, but leaves only 2 tries.

Getting 20 letters does not mean that his harvest is very useful. In this case



you see only 3 hits, and the guessed word contains a double, and it contains a Y. So, when not having 5 hits, do not forget the doubles!

Having found the ultimate solution, I had much fun:



But then I got too tired, typed in a guess twice - and the whole card house collapsed again...


Examples of the impact of the double use of a letter:













3 tries and not a single hit



C'est la vie!


Now to the real big fun:


Genius at work






Some hints, and something I did not want to show right at the beginning as it might have shocked you. But now you are ready for it.

First, some hints with words:

https://wordfind.com/length/5-letter-words/
https://wordfinder.yourdictionary.com/letter-words/5/
https://en.worder.cat/wordsfinder/VioqKiogNQ

https://wordfind.com/length/5-letter-words/



I made a pause here:




Yes, it is number 111.





I don't think that without my ultimate solution many got to this point. But go and try the ultimate solution for yourself.


Have fun!

Aribert Deckers

[AribertDeckers]

In the meantime...:




Anyone out there with more than that?

[AribertDeckers]

I had some more fun:




But it was bound to happen. Only a matter of time...

[AribertDeckers]

It nagged me to have found only 1 set of words. So I now toyed a bit and found this new set:

FETCH
BARKS
DOING
PLUMY

In contrast to

GATCH
ROVED
BLIMP
FUNKS

it exchanges the "V" (in ROVED) with the "Y" (in PLUMY).

I tried this with an other implementation of the game: WORDPLAY. It s well-done and has many nice gadgets.

https://wordplay.com/new





Does "V" occur less often than "Y"?


With this URL you can test a word:

https://wordplay.com/firstword/roved


According to WORDPLAY

"V" occurs in 1.15% of the cases.
"Y" occurs in 3.21% of the cases.

Looks like the chance for a "Y" is about 3 times a much as for a "V".


So the set

FETCH
BARKS
DOING
PLUMY

should do even better than the first one I found.

[AribertDeckers]

FETCH
BARKS
DOING
PLUMY

This set of words works astonishingly well. Instead of PLUMY the anagram LUMPY can be used.

DOING has the remarkable property of combining 2 vowels with the commmon sequence ING, and of combining frequently occuring letters.

This is the amazing word of today:

[AribertDeckers]

What would you guess?

The new set

FETCH
BARKS
DOING
LUMPY

works quite well - and more often than with the old set I could solve the riddles with 4 guesses instead of 5. The "Y" at the end of a word, like it is in LUMPY, combines the "Y" with the place where it appears in most cases. This is an additional advantage.