I just don’t understand that thinking. If the goal is to solve the puzzle, why not optimize for winning? Should I just throw a random 5 letter word out as my opener each time? JAZZY isn’t a great start.
The thinking goes along the lines of “optimizing isn’t fun, so anyone optimizing is just playing to win, and is a tryhard instead of just having a good time.”
And clearly, that makes it the ‘wrong’ way to play.
Personally, I don’t like optimizing, but I do enjoy beating the average score with a sub-optimal play style, so I appreciate those who do optimize.
The individuals' answer is interesting, but unsatisfying. The "optimal" way to play requires the player know a list of options exists and using first picks based on said list. The vast majority of players might subconsciously know there is a list of options. They have absolutely no way of knowing what is on said list.
I doubt the list has changed much since the early days, when it was accessible through the page's source code. I suspect that version is still available in various places online.
I forget what it's called but there is (or at least once was) a version where you have to follow "hard mode" rules and go the longest you possibly can without getting the word.
I wrote a program to find the guess that would give the least information each turn.
If the goal is to solve the puzzle, why not optimize for winning?
Not that I have anything against people who play Wordle differently than me, but it's because the optimized beginning words essentially remove the whole puzzle. Unless they're specifically using a word to circumvent optimized words, almost anyone can complete the Wordle using the same three letter finding words to start out with. If you're the type to brag about getting the Wordle, and you don't use letter scouting words, it's probably annoying to encounter people who completed the puzzle using what you consider a "cheat code."
Of course, this stems mostly from people feeling like completing the Wordle at all is something to brag about.
Depends on your version of fun. Me and my wife always play the wordle together every night. I’m an optimizer and love getting it in 2 or 3, but my wife goes off of vibes and often chooses a word that relates to something that happened in our day. My inclination is to optimize everything, and that may be more satisfying when it works, but honestly her way is actually funner overall. I also do think her way makes you a better player as we more unique situations and have to use more unique words. We also play on hard mode, which is when you have to use your yellow (in a new spot) or green letters instead of using 5 new letters.
We’re not trying to be competitive, though. Like if you really want to be #1 wordler, or just love using every ounce of strategy to get a few percentage points, by all means go for it and I mean that genuinely.
I don’t do it much any more but I had like a 400 day streak at one point. I would go through patches where I was just trying to get it done and I would go optimized. Other times I would try to make it more challenging. I think I have 1 or 2 single word guesses and a handful of 2 words. Vast majority were 3.
The goal isn't to solve the puzzle, the goal is to have fun. I personally think playing exactly to the meta is a soulless unfun action that turns a daily fun challenge into a chore that must be completed. Every time I play, I think of a word that uses 1 or 2 vowels and different common consonants and go from there.
I have no idea if its the best strategy or not because I think reading up on wordle strategy is lame.
Okay but hear me out… what if different people enjoy it differently? Who gives a shit? My point is simply that it is weird to tell someone they are playing wordle wrong (not accusing you of that). If I go through and solve all the vertical clues in the crossword first before attempting the horizontals, is that wrong? It’s a damn newspaper puzzle. 😆
There are many articles on this with slightly different methods and ideas, but the basic concept was that the words in the Wordle solution list and accepted guess list used to be known, so you could pretty much brute force solve it. A good first guess should, on average, yield as few remaining solutions as possible.
Words like ADIEU are good but not top-tier. There are some common words like RAISE, SLATE, CRANE that are better, and some obscure words like ROATE. Again, it depends on who you ask and when, since the solution list is now secret, but in general, eliminating some common consonants seems more powerful than four vowels. The U in ADIEU is not particularly valuable since almost no words end in U.
•
u/SuperSaiyanBen 4d ago
I imagine this is how people felt when Football unveiled the forward pass lol