Any comments on this Wordle data?

[JenniferMurphy]

Several other family members (not me) are Wordle nuts. They debate with each other about the best words to start with. It seemed to me that there ought to be a way to analyze the probabiities, so I decided to do a little "research". I downloaded several lists of 5-letter words, merged them, and removed duplicates. I ended up with 5,760 words. I wrote some code to count how often each letter occurs in each position in each word (1-5). I got this chart.

.....

I was surprised by the variability from position to position. "S", for example, is the most common letter in 1st and last position, but only #17 in 2nd. "K" is #7 overall and #4 in 4th position. So it seems pretty clear that the position of a letter really matters.

Picking letters from this chart, I suggested 3 possible first words: SAINT, CORES, & COATS. They seemed to contain all letters fairly high of the chart.

Then it occurred to me that I could calculate the average frequency of the letters in each word and then sort that list. Here are the top 150 words. My word CORES came in at #8, but the other two did not fare so well. COATS is #264 and SAINT is #2080, both off the chart below.

.....

I think the minisheet plus the VBA code is a bit too much to post here, so I've uploaded them both to this OneDrive folder. This was a quick and dirty coding run, so Im sure there are far better ways to do it. But I'd still be interested in any comments and/or suggestions for different or better data.

Microsoft OneDrive

1drv.ms

Cheers...

 

[Skyybot]

You don't like Wordle?

 

[MaxSmart]

To me the important thing is to identify as many vowels as possible
I start with AUDIO followed by PESKY

This covers all vowels as well the Y

Guess 3 then is a little simpler

 

[MARK858]

Bill's take on it (never tested it myself as I have no interest in playing)

Wordle Best Starting Words is AROSE not ADIEU - Episode 2463

Everyone has their theories on the best starting word for the Wordle game. A lot of people suggest ADIEU. But when you look at the frequency of each letter in the 8000 possible words, a better start word has AROSE. This video starts out with the most popular words. After that video wraps, a...

www.mrexcel.com

 

[JenniferMurphy]

To me the important thing is to identify as many vowels as possible
I start with AUDIO followed by PESKY

This covers all vowels as well the Y

Guess 3 then is a little simpler

One of our Wordle players told me that the consonants are more important. She says that there are a lot of words that rhyme, like CAKES, FAKES, LAKES, MAKES, RAKES, TAKES, & WAKES. Having 4 of the 5 letters still leaves you with many choices. And if yiua re playing the "Hard" version of the game, you have to use all known letters in subsequent guesses.

I'll suggest she try your method.

 

[JenniferMurphy]

Bill's take on it (never tested it myself as I have no interest in playing)

Wordle Best Starting Words is AROSE not ADIEU - Episode 2463

Everyone has their theories on the best starting word for the Wordle game. A lot of people suggest ADIEU. But when you look at the frequency of each letter in the 8000 possible words, a better start word has AROSE. This video starts out with the most popular words. After that video wraps, a...

www.mrexcel.com

Interesting

 

[Skyybot]

To me the important thing is to identify as many vowels as possible
I start with AUDIO followed by PESKY

This covers all vowels as well the Y

Guess 3 then is a little simpler

I use Shout and Bread.

 

[JenniferMurphy]

To me the important thing is to identify as many vowels as possible
I start with AUDIO followed by PESKY

This covers all vowels as well the Y

Guess 3 then is a little simpler

On my rating list based on letter frequencies by position, AUDIO is #256, PESKY is # 3598.

 

[JenniferMurphy]

I use Shout and Bread.

On my rating list based on letter frequencies by position, SHOUT is #4398, BREAD is #627.

 

[MaxSmart]

Several other family members (not me) are Wordle nuts. They debate with each other about the best words to start with. It seemed to me that there ought to be a way to analyze the probabiities, so I decided to do a little "research". I downloaded several lists of 5-letter words, merged them, and removed duplicates. I ended up with 5,760 words. I wrote some code to count how often each letter occurs in each position in each word (1-5). I got this chart.

.....

I was surprised by the variability from position to position. "S", for example, is the most common letter in 1st and last position, but only #17 in 2nd. "K" is #7 overall and #4 in 4th position. So it seems pretty clear that the position of a letter really matters.

Picking letters from this chart, I suggested 3 possible first words: SAINT, CORES, & COATS. They seemed to contain all letters fairly high of the chart.

Then it occurred to me that I could calculate the average frequency of the letters in each word and then sort that list. Here are the top 150 words. My word CORES came in at #8, but the other two did not fare so well. COATS is #264 and SAINT is #2080, both off the chart below.

.....

I think the minisheet plus the VBA code is a bit too much to post here, so I've uploaded them both to this OneDrive folder. This was a quick and dirty coding run, so Im sure there are far better ways to do it. But I'd still be interested in any comments and/or suggestions for different or better data.

Microsoft OneDrive

1drv.ms

Cheers...

Do your statistics include words where one letter appears more than once - like PAPER, APPLY etc. ? Those ones can really trip you up as having already guessed one correct letter you are then looking for letters other than the ones already used!