PART A – Written Saturday 22nd January 2022
You must have seen them. These funny coloured squares that just appear on social media. The uninitiated, as I was two weeks ago, wonder what it’s all about.
Wordle 217 6/6
⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
⬜🟩⬜🟨🟨
🟨🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩⬜⬜🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
For me it was even more intriguing because of my own name, and no wonder as a Wardle created it in the first place. Having tried it once I was as hooked as the other two million people that currently take part.
For those aforementioned uninitiated, you guess a five letter word and you get 6 chances to do so. On each attempt letters in the word will show as yellow and if they are in the right place as green. It is similar to the ITV show Lingo although you get no starter letter. As you can see from today’s puzzle above I only just made it. There is one puzzle a day and it is the same word for everyone.
My problem though is I am too competitive. I am getting disgruntled now at how many times it is taking me to 6 attempts. Having stupidly looked at the hashtag entries on Twitter, I am amazed at how many people are getting it at three and even two attempts. Colour me suspicious. Two weeks means 14 words and I have failed twice. On the first occasion it was because I did not know that Wordle used American spelling – FAVOR without a U. The second time I was rushing and was obviously more annoyed at then getting it wrong. Of the 12 successes, I had a 3 once, 4 five times, 5 once and 6 five times. So yes, it is possible to succeed in 3 every now and then but to do it consistently does not compute because there are too many variables.
I found out how to cheat by accident. I am probably one of the very few people that do not use their phone but play on a laptop. This laptop has a battery issue and I have been thinking of going back to my old laptop until I can afford a new one. Ergo, I thought I better get Wordle up on the old one. I had already done the word for that day on this laptop and it was one of my failure days, but when I went in on the old one to bookmark the page I got another go. I could have aced it and posted that but that is not me so I left my failure up. However, it did illustrate that it appears you can log on with two different devices and get two chances.
Today I got the word in 6. Now if you look at Line 4 you will see that I had three letters in the right place and one in the wrong place. Therefore, I knew the last four letters and the correct order. The problem was that there were three letters that could be the first and I only had two attempts left. Guess or play safe? For attempt five I put in a word that used two of those letters and thus worked out what the final letter was for my final attempt. A sacrifice in order to be sure of not failing. Now when I check Twitter there are a number of people that got this in two attempts so I decided to Google about cheating the game.
Was I surprised! There was an article that gave two or three ways to cheat although all of them involved some digital trickery which I am not interested in. However, one of these involved working out words in advance. This article listed a week’s words. I scrolled down until today as I had just done mine and all the past 5 days were up there. I didn’t scroll down to Sunday because why would I, I like playing the game, but I am stopping this blog here and will pick up tomorrow after my game to see if they were right.
PART B – written Sunday 23rd January 2022
Well, now it’s Sunday. First job to do was today’s Wordle which I did in 4 as you can see below.
Wordle 218 4/6
⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Next, I went back to the article I found yesterday and scrolled down to today’s predicted answer and it was the same. Therefore, it has been worked out how to calculate forthcoming words. It is a technical process for computer geeks which I could not follow but I would not want to. I am competitive, yes, but not a cheat. If I was I would just use my other laptop which could say:
Wordle 218 1/6
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
The other question I had was how long do you can you take to solve a puzzle? There seems to be no deadline but I just assumed that you have to solve it there and then with no aids. Today took less than three minutes. However, I saw a tweet yesterday where someone told of having to get out a pen and paper to write down the alternatives. I thought you just had to do it in your head,
Anyway, enough analysing. I will always have suspicions about getting it in two. The only way you could do that more than once is if you keep charging your starter word and got lucky at least twice. I have seen a couple of people who got it in one. I wonder if they change their starter word the next day. I read an article last week on people’s starting words and was glad to see that a lot of people use the same one as me – ADIEU. Don’t think I am giving away any secrets there because it has four of the five vowels. If none of these letters are in, which has happened two or three times, then I just throw a STROP.
My prediction is, if I ever get it in one so will a lot of other people, and if I get it in two then that will be very lucky. Going forward my target score has got to be 4 and I will be annoyed when it takes more.
Wordle up!