Warming Up

I continue to sleep badly, which usually means I end up doing Wordle at about 4am, though today I did it just after midnight, as I waited for the adrenaline to die down. It’s a nice daily challenge and satisfying when deduction works out, though it’s probably a bit easier than it appears, which is probably also part of the reason for its success.

The other day I got no letters right in my first two goes, but was able to deduce what the correct word was from what was left. It felt like magic.

I enjoy going on Twitter and changing my definition of skill based on how many turns it took me today. But in reality it seems to me that getting it in one is pure (and unlikely) luck - maybe you picked up a clue consciously or subconsciously from someone else. Or maybe you cheated. But although it must be fun for your lottery numbers to come up if you really have acted honestly and without influence, that is clearly just good fortune. Similarly getting it in 2 would usually mean you got very lucky with your first word, or had a very fortunate guess. I have been able to deduce on a second go, but usually with a couple of possible options and only if you’ve hit something pretty important in your first go. 

Realistically I think you can get it in three with skill and a minimal amount of luck and should be aiming to get it within four. Anything over that means you’ve either had pretty bad luck in terms of ending up with three or four letters in the right place, but a lot of options as to what could go in the other space or spaces or you haven’t been paying proper attention.

I also think that you should be playing with honor (little gag there for Wordle fans) and can’t ignore the yellow and green squares you’ve been given and most incorporate them in the next go. Using up a couple of words that cover all the main bases in your first two goes feels like cheating to me. I also think you should mix it up with your first word. Obviously there are words that give you a better chance of finding or discounting common letters, but I also feel like you should be bold, take chances and not make life too easy for yourself. I favour changing my starting word which might include a couple of vowels or a t and an r, but should also include one or two of the more unlikely letters. Maybe they’ll come to nothing, but if they hit then it will make a tricky word more likely to be solved. And it’s just a bit more fun that way.

I also think you should take your turns pretty quickly. I rarely take more than a couple of minutes to do the puzzle and often I do it within one. Yesterday it took me a while to come up with a word that would fit the parameters of what I knew, but it was still only maybe two minutes before I realised it could only be knoll.

Some people are getting annoyed that people put their grid up on Twitter (and I am sure this will be a passing fad) but I don’t know why. It’s not like Twitter isn’t full of people making out something that interests them is worth tweeting and with Wordle grids it is very easy to scroll past them and know you’re not missing anything if it’s not your bag. I like to see how other people have done, but once you know the answer there’s also the fun of attempting to reverse engineer what their failed guesses were. It’s an extra game.

And I also like to discuss tactics in too much detail and criticise people for not playing to my exacting rules. 

Today on Twitter I had fun by putting up some fake clues, because I knew that some people would think they were real and get annoyed with me and other people would think they were real and try and use them to get the right word and be punished for their mendacity. I would advise people who play wordle to avoid going on Twitter until they have had their turn. I’ve seen clues myself in the past that actually usually don’t help - for example when everyone was going on about American spellings I knew that the word pretty much had to end in or. And I tried three variants before I found the right word. I think I would have done better if I’d just played blind.

The word today was Sugar which took me 4 turns, but I feel I should have got there in 3. So I wrote a clue of “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it…..”

And sugar is a valid answer to that. As is pretty much any word in the English language. You can’t really make horses do much. You can’t make them sugar for sure. Unless you have a sugar factory. Obviously I was pushing people towards drink.

Some people got cross, most people realised I was taking the piss, one person actually got it from the clue. Their previous go had shown it couldn’t be drink, so they had used a weird logic to think that horses eat sugar lumps and thus the answer must be sugar. Maybe somewhere subconsciously I had made a link (though I doubt it) or maybe it was something to do with Shergar. Anyway, was pretty mind-blowing that that worked.

Anyway, it’s a fun way to start the day and so far I have 100% record, though have strayed into taking 5 or 6 goes a couple of times. Like I say, it’s a pretty hard game to fail at if you are paying attention, but it’s possible. No one is better than me though.

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