Hello everyone
Have you caught the Wordle bug yet?
What is Wordle?
Wordle is—unsurprisingly—a word game. It is simple to play, but not simplistic.
There is nothing to download and nothing to install; just go to the web page (powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle) and there is a new puzzle every 24 hours. Since it’s on a web page, you can access Wordle from a computer, a tablet, or your phone.
And it must be good—the New York Times has just bought Wordle for an undisclosed price in the low-seven figures (that’s $millions to you and me).
How to play Wordle
You have six attempts to guess a five letter word.
Each guess must be a five letter word (so you can’t just try a string of arbitrary letters). After each guess, the background to each tile will change:
- a green background shows a correct letter in the correct place
- a yellow background shows a correct letter in the wrong place
- a gray background shows a letter that is not in the word
The keys on the input keyboard will similarly show the letters from the previously guessed words.
As a side note, there is no hint given for double letters.
Hard Mode
If you really want to make Wordle difficult, there is the hard mode (you can engage hard mode to have the mode enforced, or you can choose to play this way). With hard mode, any revealed letters (whether or not in the correct place) must be used in subsequent guesses.
Where to Start
The key to Wordle is the first word (or words). Guessing a five letter word is nearly impossible, but you can choose a word that is likely to give you more clues.
ADIEU
ADIEU is an interesting starter word—it gives you four vowels, plus D. However, I find it is less helpful because it contains so many vowels. I need more consonants to give me a clue.
Letter Frequency
One other reason why ADIEU may be a poor choice on its own is that it includes the letter U. There are other letters that appear far more frequently (than U) and therefore may have a greater probability of occurring.
So what are the letters that appear more frequently (in the English language)?
And this is where we have a difficulty… The frequency of letters depends on your source of data (and discussions about sources are not for today). But let me make a suggestion as to what might be the ten most frequent letters in the English language:
A D E H I N O R S T
And also a suggestion for some of the least frequent letters:
J K Q V X Z
Rudimentary Tactic
If you want to invoke hard mode, you’re on your own. For the rest of us, looking at the most frequently occurring characters offers a rudimentary tactic: create words using only the most frequent characters, and avoid the least frequent characters.
Starting Combinations
Unless you’re lucky, it’s unlikely that your first guess will elicit sufficient information to guess the answer on your second try, so it’s good to have a second starter word. To be useful, this second word should not include any characters in the first (to give the maximum chance of identifying other letters), but it should include all (or at least many of) the remaining frequent letters.
With this logic, I will often begin with: TINES and HOARD. With these two words, I can cover the ten most common letters. There are other variants (for instance, RADIO and THENS), but TINES and HOARD is where I start.
The Third Guess
You may need a third try if the first two words don’t reveal sufficient details to make an informed guess.
If you need a third try and you’ve followed my approach by deploying the ten most frequent letters, then—if we ignore the least frequent letters (J K Q V X Z)—we are left with: B C F G L M P U W Y.
From these options, I usually choose CLUMP, but you could equally have LUMPY or BUMPY.
Alternatively, you could try something like QUICK or LUCKY (or any other word with the less frequent letters) if you suspect these might be included in the word.
Which is the Right Tactic?
There is no right tactic—there is only the tactic that is right for you. The point of the opening moves is to find enough of the right letters to trigger a thought allowing you to find the correct word. However great a word may seem…however many frequently used characters it may contain, if it doesn’t trigger some thoughts for you, then it is a no use.
So how does Wordle Link to Books?
It doesn’t.
Wordle doesn’t have a connection to books or writing (apart from words…), but sometimes you’re allowed to do something just for fun. So get out there and Wordle—if you haven’t already done so, try starting with TINES, HOARD, and CLUMP—and I’ll see you again in March.
Until then.
All the best
Simon