Worst Wordle Ever

The NYT occasionally deletes my Wordle history, so I don't know my lifetime stats. But I've only missed one of my last 113 puzzles and I don't recall what it was. 

I don't know if 99%+ success rate is particularly good because let's face it, Wordle is generally a pretty easy puzzle to solve. I suspect there are people who never missed a single one. 


So a friend was trolling me about a WaPo article on the nine-win 1972-73 76ers, before sharing his failed Wordle. I start with SIXER. (A little surprised it was accepted as a word.) CIDER, MINER, GIVER — I’m pretty much just randomly plugging in unused letters now — FIBER, LITER.


my go-to is CRATE. Sometimes MOUND. Rarely SLATE. And in the few instances when CRATE doesn't reveal a letter, the CRATE-MOUND one-two punch is pretty effective.


So yesterday's word -- did they change the rules? Because I don't feel like variants of words -- comparatives, past tense, etc -- used to be allowed? Admittedly I don't play as often these days, so maybe this is old news?


PVW said:

So yesterday's word -- did they change the rules? Because I don't feel like variants of words -- comparatives, past tense, etc -- used to be allowed? Admittedly I don't play as often these days, so maybe this is old news?

not old news to me. I still play every day, and I deliberately avoided the correct answer because of the variants question.


I don't understand people complaining about words unless they aren't in the dictionary or are very obscure. Yesterday's word that is the subject of so many complaints here and on Facebook doesn't qualify. And I didn't get it either but it's because I failed to exit "hard mode" soon enough to play what I call an "elimination word" (i.e. a word with as many of the not yet played letters as possible in order to rule some in or out rather than continuing to guess at the one or two white space letters over and over.) If I had done that one play earlier, I would have gotten it and so would many others who got sucked into the "letter drain".


ml1 said:

my go-to is CRATE. Sometimes MOUND. Rarely SLATE. And in the few instances when CRATE doesn't reveal a letter, the CRATE-MOUND one-two punch is pretty effective.

Not revealing any letters can actually be fairly helpful because it rules out five. Ruling letters out is nearly as helpful (and occasionally more helpful) than ruling them in.


sac said:

I don't understand people complaining about words unless they aren't in the dictionary or are very obscure. Yesterday's word that is the subject of so many complaints here and on Facebook doesn't qualify. And I didn't get it either but it's because I failed to exit "hard mode" soon enough to play what I call an "elimination word" (i.e. a word with as many of the not yet played letters as possible in order to rule some in or out rather than continuing to guess at the one or two white space letters over and over.) If I had done that one play earlier, I would have gotten it and so would many others who got sucked into the "letter drain".

the problem is that if you allow variants, as explained by PVW, then too often the game just becomes a simple guessing game, which is kind of boring. it's pretty clearly been an unofficial rule that such words were not used as answers. might as well allow plurals. that would be real fun.

I blame the Times.


drummerboy said:

sac said:

I don't understand people complaining about words unless they aren't in the dictionary or are very obscure. Yesterday's word that is the subject of so many complaints here and on Facebook doesn't qualify. And I didn't get it either but it's because I failed to exit "hard mode" soon enough to play what I call an "elimination word" (i.e. a word with as many of the not yet played letters as possible in order to rule some in or out rather than continuing to guess at the one or two white space letters over and over.) If I had done that one play earlier, I would have gotten it and so would many others who got sucked into the "letter drain".

the problem is that if you allow variants, as explained by PVW, then too often the game just becomes a simple guessing game, which is kind of boring. it's pretty clearly been an unofficial rule that such words were not used as answers. might as well allow plurals. that would be real fun.

I blame the Times.

Yesterday's word wasn't a variant as far as I'm aware.


In Quordle (with 4 words at once - and up to 9 attempts) I use SPORT, BADLY, and CHIME to start off with 15 different letters. Once, one of the Quordle words was "BADLY", which helped me get all 4 words in 6 tries that round. I can usually get them in 7-8 tries.  

[ETA: I think Quordle has stranger words and more variants than Wordle does]


sac said:

Yesterday's word wasn't a variant as far as I'm aware.

The word I got was "riper," which I would call a variant of "ripe". Did you get a different word? Or does "riper" have another meaning I'm not familiar with than "more ripe" that stands on its own? If comparatives are allowed, then as DB notes, I don't see why plurals wouldn't be, and at that point for me it makes it less enjoyable to play.


PVW said:

So yesterday's word -- did they change the rules? Because I don't feel like variants of words -- comparatives, past tense, etc -- used to be allowed? Admittedly I don't play as often these days, so maybe this is old news?

That was my friend’s complaint, too, when he shared his doomed attempts.

If SIXER passed muster, maybe there’s a team out there known as the Ripers. (Toronto’s NBA squad is awfully close.)


In Scottish slang a riper is a criminal.


dave said:

In Scottish slang a riper is a criminal.

there ya go


DaveSchmidt said:

That was my friend’s complaint, too, when he shared his doomed attempts.

If SIXER passed muster, maybe there’s a team out there known as the Ripers. (Toronto’s NBA squad is awfully close.)

I'd have been unhappy with SIXER as well.

Funny how hints work -- I got to "ripen" by my fifth guess, but since I'd seen this thread I was already on the lookout for it being a tricky word -- I probably wouldn't have gotten that far without the heads up. When "ripen" didn't work, it was with a bit of incredulity that I changed the "n" to an "r"


Well, I stand corrected on blaming the NYT -- apparently "riper" is in the original wordle list (the list is easy enough to find online, but careful about accidentally spoiling future plays for yourself). I still hold it shouldn't be, but that does take a bit of the sting out of my outrage now that I can't blame it on a giant media company.


sac said:

ml1 said:

my go-to is CRATE. Sometimes MOUND. Rarely SLATE. And in the few instances when CRATE doesn't reveal a letter, the CRATE-MOUND one-two punch is pretty effective.

Not revealing any letters can actually be fairly helpful because it rules out five. Ruling letters out is nearly as helpful (and occasionally more helpful) than ruling them in.

yes. that combination of CRATE and MOUND will either rule in, or eliminate a lot of commonly used letters. SOUND would actually be an even better second word, now that I think of it grin


Today is another day for crossing fingers and guessing 



ml1 said:

Today is another day for crossing fingers and guessing

I think you exhausted all X X _ X X possibilities, though, so were probably safe from flaming out.


DaveSchmidt said:

ml1 said:

Today is another day for crossing fingers and guessing

I think you exhausted all X X _ X X possibilities, though, so were probably safe from flaming out.

yes. But it's a little annoying when you have three possibilities and you guess wrong twice grin


The only "variant" that Wordle won't use is a plural. sac is right about everything she wrote. Period.

We have a great Facebook group by the way started a year ago by librarylady. Not to take away from Jamie but this is a friendly, helpful and non-competitive group. If you know me and have a Facebook account reach out via FB or PM here and I'll invite you. It's a private group.


Maybe it's not as hard if you don't play 'hard' mode. I got today's in 3. 

ETA: [But it definitely helped that I had that middle letter in my second word]:


wendy said:

The only "variant" that Wordle won't use is a plural. sac is right about everything she wrote. Period.

nope

period


Yesterday, I guessed beaux as my fourth word and Wordlebot said that's not a word in Wordle, I assume because it's a plural... From what I have seen, they steer away from xxxer and xxxed words unless they have a meaning on their own. 

Also, Wordlebot cheats on its score. That is all...


[Spoiler/hint warning!]   

For today's (2/25) Wordle, I wanted to find out the position of the "t". I was like, there is no way it's going to accept the slang word for breast (singular) that has three "t's" in it. Well, Wordle did accept that word as a guess (in case anyone else was curious). So, I got to find that out, AND also find out what position the letter was in!


sprout said:

So, I got to find that out, AND also find out what position the letter was in!

Now we know Wordle blesses diminutive variants, too.


PVW said:

sac said:

Yesterday's word wasn't a variant as far as I'm aware.

The word I got was "riper," which I would call a variant of "ripe". Did you get a different word? Or does "riper" have another meaning I'm not familiar with than "more ripe" that stands on its own? If comparatives are allowed, then as DB notes, I don't see why plurals wouldn't be, and at that point for me it makes it less enjoyable to play.

Yes, the word that day was RIPER but, as mentioned, I did not get it in the six tries.  But I didn't think it was a bad word for them to have selected.

The editor of the game can use any word they want to. They have said that they avoid plurals formed with an s, but not other plurals (e.g. cacti.) But I'm not aware that they have said the same thing about the "er" form. As far as I know, none of those "conventions" about what words they choose are written in stone (or in the documentation of the game), but they have been shared in articles/interviews about it from time to time.


DaveSchmidt said:

sprout said:

So, I got to find that out, AND also find out what position the letter was in!

Now we know Wordle blesses diminutive variants, too.

For reference, it seems Wordle does allow some words for guesses that it does NOT include in its list of 'possible Wordle answers'. 

I had one of those days where I got to only a single-letter missing, and was guessing words with different letters in that spot. In the results analysis, I had two rows where it said there was only 1 answer left, because on my second-to-last try it did accept a slang-ish word as a guess, but didn't have that in it's list of possible words left to win the Wordle.


sprout said:

For reference, it seems Wordle does allow some words for guesses that it does NOT include in its list of 'possible Wordle answers'.

I had one of those days where I got to only a single-letter missing, and was guessing words with different letters in that spot. In the results analysis, I had two rows where it said there was only 1 answer left, because on my second-to-last try it did accept a slang-ish word as a guess, but didn't have that in it's list of possible words left to win the Wordle.

Yup. Most conspicuously, plurals can be guessed at any time.

That other thing happened to me once, too, I think.


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