It would seem like I had it made with guess #1...but no. There were six possibilities, so no way I was going to go for it. I've fallen into that trap before. I laid up on guess #2 with a word that had 3 of the possible letters. If none came up, I would've had to do it again, but, fortunately, one did.
I hadn't thought of that strategy. So basically, if there are too many possible solutions, you ignore the greens and throw in something that on the one hand you know won't be the right answer, but that on the other hand may end up giving you more information overall?
Yes. In the case of that last one, the letters P, D, K, L, V, and M were all possible. So, I guessed MOPED to find the right one or eliminate possibilities. If it hadn't shown me the right letter, I probably would've guessed KNURL or LARVA to eliminate 2 of the 3 remaining. If you don't do this, you're liable to have 3, 4, 5 guesses before you hit the correct one. (You can tell when this happens to someone: they have multiple guesses with 4 green letters!) Better to use a guess to narrow the options. My rule is: when there are only two possibilities, go ahead and guess the solution. There's no point in narrowing down two. It will cost you a guess to narrow it, meaning you'll need a second guess to solve it. If you go for it when there are two possibilities, you should need only 1 guess 50% of the time. If there are 3 or more possibilities, I narrow it with an extra guess.
I considered your guess #3 at one point, but I had already eliminated one of the letters. You have no excuse for guess #4 given your known letters in guess #3.
Anyone looking for an extra challenge, check out dordle.com or octordle.com. Either two words to get in 7 guesses or 8 words in 13 guesses - but your guess counts for ALL of the words you haven't yet gotten. Dordle isn't too hard, but I have only had 2 wins in a dozen games of Octo - it has a tendency to choose very obscure words OR ones where you can have 4/5 letters but multiple possibilities, so you can whittle your remaining guesses down very easily. Got this on the last guess this morning:
If I had drawing skills and a lot of time on my hands, I'd start a Twitter or Instagram or whatever where people could send me their Wordle chains and I'd draw cartoons of whatever the sequence of words suggested.
Mine: POINT, often followed by READS or DARES, has become my most common starter. For some reason, I have an easier time coming up with non-overlapping words if I keep them confined to the left or right half of the keyboard.
Unspoilered because it's from a knockoff ... it's weird how many times I realize after the fact that I've completely overlooked a more obvious word and tried something obscure instead.
I do that shockingly often, but... ...if both words are in the database (and they are or you couldn't guess them) then they have an equal likelihood of being the correct answer. Where I really kick myself is when I make a guess where I could've eliminated more letters by making a better choice.
