October 7, 2024

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Viral Games: Tips for Succeeding in Wordle

Wordle, the daily online word game, erupted onto the scene near the end of 2021, shortly after its developer, Josh Wardle, released it into the world. The game managed to quickly connect with players and became a viral hit, owing mostly to its simple gameplay and social gamification features, such as online leaderboards and ease of sharing.

 

According to an Insider report, experts revealed that the game activates the language and logic processing parts of the brain, releasing large levels of dopamine when the puzzle is completed. Of course, this is one of the reasons why players continue to return day after day. Furthermore, the game is free and accessible to everyone with a device and an internet connection. However, since the game was recently acquired by the New York Times, players anticipate that it will be moved behind the NYT paywall in the near future.

 

Wordle, for those who haven’t tried it yet, challenges players to guess a five-letter word each day, with just six chances to find the correct answer. Hints are only offered when a guess is entered, with each letter changing color to indicate its current or potential position in the word. As far as statistics go, Wordle is fairly minimal, with the only information offered being the number of total games played, win percentage, how many words players have guessed in the game so far, and how many times they’ve won in a row.

 

If you are among the thousands of fans that take pride in keeping their streak alive and climbing up the leaderboards, you are probably looking for ways to boost your results and improve your skills when playing Wordle. Fortunately, there are a few tips and tricks you can implement to help make things a little easier when guessing the daily challenge. Let’s get into it.

Get familiar with five-letter words

If you want to have the best chance of discovering the hidden word each day, it won’t hurt to strengthen your vocabulary skills by refreshing your memory of some of the English language’s five-letter words. After all, it’s going to be hard to guess a word that you have never heard of.

 

There are over 9,000 distinct five-letter words permitted in the game of Scrabble, which shares a similar dictionary to that of Wordle. While it would be obscene to propose remembering all of these terms, you can certainly develop an understanding of how these words are formed, such as the most prevalent prefixes and suffixes.

Make your first guess count

In Wordle, you only get six guesses to uncover the word of the day. Thus, each guess must be used wisely, and none is more important than the first guess. If you play an optimal strategy, your first guess must uncover the most information possible (or at least have the highest chance of doing so). With this in mind, firing a Hail Mary and guessing a random word is not likely to yield the best results.

 

As you know, the English language is composed of vowels and consonants, some of them being more common than others. According to Readers’ Digest, the ten most common letters are as follows (these are in order):

 

  • E – 11.1607%
  • A – 8.4966%
  • R – 7.5809%
  • I – 7.5448%
  • O – 7.1635%
  • T – 6.9509%
  • N – 6.6544%
  • S – 5.7351%
  • L – 5.4893%
  • C – 4.5388%

 

Your first guess should contain as many of these letters as possible since it will give you the best chance of uncovering at least one of the tiles. A few words that you can use as first-round guesses that include all of these letters include “OCEAN,” “RAISE,” and “CANOE.” Remember, if a tile changes to green, it means you have found the correct letter in the correct spot. If the tile turns yellow, you have discovered the correct letter, but it is in the wrong spot.

Here is our guess progression for the Wordle challenge on the 18th of July, 2022. The word OCEAN quickly revealed two letters that were correct but positioned incorrectly. Since the letters “O,” and “C” make up one of the most common suffixes, “OCK,” we went ahead and made an educated guess of “CROCK,” which luckily revealed 3 three green tiles. From there, we simply put in a few guesses until we finally came up with the correct answer.

Grab a pen and paper

You can’t afford to be wasteful since guesses are limited. Once you’ve revealed a few hints, jot down some thoughts about where you want to take your next guesses. As most people struggle to retain a mental image of the words they wish to use, it’s best to write potential solutions down on paper to free up some of your mental processing power. Furthermore, writing things down can help shift your thinking into a different gear, which may reveal new angles you haven’t yet considered.

Use a word unscrambler

Sometimes, mere brain power won’t be enough to complete the challenge. In these cases, you’re going to need a helping hand. Fortunately, you can use a word unscrambler to help formulate ideas for your subsequent guesses. For instance, if you already have the starting or ending letters, you can use an unscrambler to show you all the possible words that fit within that particular scenario.

 

In the example we gave above, we knew the final three letters were “OCK” after just two guesses. If you enter these letters into the word unscrambler, you will be presented with a full list of potential candidates for the day’s word. Using this information, you will have a much better chance of beating the challenges.

 

Watch out for repeat letters

One of the biggest areas of frustration when playing Wordle is that some words contain repeat letters, which can easily throw you off course. For example, the word “AMASS” contains two of the letters “A” and “S.” When solving the daily word, try to stay sharp for these situations.

Final word

While the game may appear simple at first glance, Wordle can be extremely challenging if you do not play with a well-thought-out strategy and blindly guess words at random. Using the tips, tricks, and tools in this article will put you on your way to becoming an excellent Wordle player, allowing you to surge up the ranks and outshine your friends and family.