HOW do you Wordle? It turns out that there are strategies galore to tackle the online puzzle but not all are on board with consistent approaches, as the game continues to obsess players, including Bill Gates.

 

Wordle is still taking over the world?

The puzzle - which quickly went viral after launching nearly a year ago - was snapped up for an undisclosed seven-figure-sum by the New York Times earlier this year and it now appears on the paper’s website, drawing millions of players a month all over the globe. The paper has now been analysing the data to see how exactly we all ‘Wordle’.

 

Remind me…?

If you have not yet been drawn in, ‘wordlers’ have to guess a new five-letter word each day, but they only have six attempts to get it right. After each guess, they are told if letters are correct (they turn green); or wrong (they turn grey) or right, but in the wrong place (they turn yellow), guiding them toward the solution.

 

So what has the analysis found?

The paper reported that appraising data from June 15 to August 22 revealed that most players do not have a favourite starting word that they always begin with, saying that out of the "tens of millions of people who played the game during that time, only 28 per cent of players with more than 10 games under their belts used the same word consistently", which was measured as more than 90 per cent of the time.

 

Wordlers have their favourites, though?

Of those who do have consistently favourite starting words, the most commonly clung to was ‘ADIEU’, the French for goodbye. The NYT found it was used by an average of 5% of users daily, amounting to millions of people.

 

And Bill is a big fan?

Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates revealed earlier this week in a blog post that he is addicted to the daily online for game. He wrote: “I’ve started every day since February or March doing the same thing. Not long after I wake up, I grab my phone or laptop and solve Wordle”, before adding that he later checks his email “to see how I stacked up against the friends and family who share my obsession”.

 

And what of his approach?

Gates also shared his own strategy for guessing the answer in four shots or less, writing: “If you’ve played Wordle, you know how important it is to make your first guess strategically. I like to start with a word that contains lots of vowels, like AUDIO or OUNCE.”

 

That’s a popular strategy?

The newspaper previously recommended a similar strategy, saying three of the five letters in any starting word should be vowels and the paper’s AI programme, WordleBot, which analysis strategies, has put forward the best starting words as CARTE, CRATE, SLANT, SLATE, CRANE and TRACE.

 

And if you are on a losing streak?

You are not alone as even billionaire businessmen fall foul of the puzzle. Gates revealed: “One time, I had the last four letters of a word: A-S-T-Y. I just needed the first letter, but I was down to my final guess. Thinking of obscure words, I tried PASTY. But I’d forgotten one of the cardinal rules of Wordle: Letters can be used more than once. The answer was TASTY. I lost, thanks to that lousy double T. Lesson learned.”