Like many, I have recently been drawn into the world of Wordle, or the Wordle World, if you will. I started to see the game title popping up on my Facebook page, and, as I am rarely the first to find out about anything, I let it pass on.
Then I heard about the game in connection with the New York Times. Again, as something of a Luddite, I failed to investigate the phenomenon further – although the inventor was now something approaching a squillionaire, enabled to see across all space and time. All I could imagine was all the great inventions that I had undoubtedly thought up first, that somebody else got to market before me. These inventions include the MP3 player, peer to peer betting sites, and, I am pretty sure, the internal combustion engine.
When my nieces appeared with the games on their phones, I relented and began to look at what the Wordle Phenomenon was about. Determined that it should not become another “Homescapes”, I decided that it would not draw me in too deeply.
With that in mind, here is my contribution to opening gameplay and theory.
The art of winning at Wordle is not finding what the answer is, but finding what it is not. It can be seen as a series of experiments designed to test an evolving hypothesis about what letters are in the word and which position they occupy.
For the uninitiated, here is an overview of the rules of engagement.
Your task is to guess a random five-lettered word. If you remember the board game Mastermind, it is a bit like that, but with fewer coloured pegs to go up the hoover.
The first step is to type in a starting word. It can be anything and, if you are lucky, you will guess right first time once in a millennia. If this does occur, you do not suddenly have the gift; it was probably just the app feeling sorry for you, so don’t give up your day job to become a stage psychic.
This phenomenon has happened to me once, and still, the queue for readings, blessings and exorcisms extends halfway around the block. Whilst I accept the outpouring of adoration, the wizard’s hat is still a bit much.
But most of the time, you will be wrong – it is just a question of by how far.
If all of the letters in your guess remain grey, none of them appears in the solution. But this is still valuable data, as you now have a lot more idea about what the word is not – that is unless you opened with something like XYLEM, in which case your friends think you make life unreasonably tricky for yourself.
If any letters turn orange, you know they are in the word but are not currently in the correct position. This is excellent data, but not as cool as if they go green. In this case, the letter is correct and is in the right place.
Is it making sense? I hope so because I’m not typing it again.
A note on annotation.
In order to increase the notion of complexity and, therefore, the illusion of intellectual rigour, we will be applying the standard annotation of the Tirana Protocol. While the fashion seems to be favouring the Sao Paulo School, I have always felt the Tirana standardisation offered more in the way of veiling. Heaven forbid that we should use the actual colours, as described above. I think the following offers greater clarity and breadth of overall expression:
(YY): Letter correct and in the right place (Green in the colour system.)
(YN): Letter correct, but in the wrong place (Amber in the colour system.)
(N): Letter incorrect (Grey in the colour system.)
(N?): Come on, it was never going to be that.
(??): What were you thinking?
(*?): Lose all knowledge of English, and doubt everything you ever knew.
So, schoolboy probability tells me that there must be an optimum starting word containing all of the five most-used letters in the English language. I went online to find out what these letters might be, only to be confronted by a list of ten.
Here are the top ten, in order: E T A O I N S R H L D
From this, I derive my opening word – which is STARE. If I play this consistently, I will be right first time once every 28.73 years.
Let’s begin a game, which I will be playing live.
Attempt 1: STARE
Result 1: S(N); T(N); A(YN); R(N); E(N).
Well, this is heinous – no S, T, R, or E? What manner of witchcraft is this? I’d really like to try some other vowels, plus some of the other common consonants. I also need to re-position the A. Ah! I have an idea.
Attempt 2: AMINO
Result 2: A(YN); M(N); I(YN); N(N); O(N) (*?)
From here, I am struggling a bit. I want to try CHAIR or CHAIN, but I know the A doesn’t go there, and there is no N or R. I am willing to “burn” a turn to check for the presence of the CH. I have a think.
(A “burn” is a turn that you know is wrong – but you’re just looking the do something, anything!)
I decide to “burn”, knowing there is no S, but I’m trying to test other letters and pin down the position of the A and I combo.
Attempt 3: BASIC
Result 3: B(N); A(YN); S(N); I(YN); C(N) (**??)
I’m thinking this must be a very obscure word, only used in remote, English-speaking areas of Patagonia. However, I know that the A occupies one of the last two positions.
I begin substitution. Substitution is when you blindly substitute in every letter left on your keyboard with the hope of uncovering something. Hope being the operative term. I’m hoping to find a word that has A in position 4 and I in position 2 – all without using letters I know are wrong.
Nevertheless – in desperation, I try a test/burn combo again.
Attempt 4: FINAL
Result 4: F(N); I(YY); N(N); A(YN); L(N)
Still not great, but this is what we know – our quarry looks like _I_ _ A. And here, all my previous knowledge of the language breaks down. I revert to substitution. Simultaneously, I wonder if the two middle spaces are a double-letter.
And that’s it! But surely Wordle would not be evil enough to roll out a double z? I test for it.
Attempt 5: PIZZA
Result 5: P(YY); I(YY); Z(YY); Z(YY); A(YY). – Winner!
Pizza? Pizza? Pizza? Are you having a chuckle? One Z would be bad enough, but two? Next to each other?
I slope away, silently fuming. While I am victorious, I feel it was only a pyrrhic victory. But I know I will be back later, battling the letter, permutations and combinations.
But this is the life of the Wordleist – tough, unrelenting, and ultimately made up of a series of fiver-lettered words, even if some of them are relatively obscuring. Perhaps my new opening word should be ZINGY. I don’t know.
Don’t say you were not warned. Toodles and happy grappling. At least I know what I don’t want for tea.