The map hopper: NYT Wordle #1163: How I solved it

Sunday 25 August 2024

NYT Wordle #1163: How I solved it

Image courtesy: www.nytimes.com/

Today, the 25th of August 2024, is game 1163 of NYT Wordle. I try to solve this daily and have completed 332 of these over the last couple of years. So here is my Wordle journey for today, which includes my guesses, thought process, some statistics, and, of course, the ANSWER!

I always start my Wordle with 'Trace'. Let's see what that resulted into:

After the first guess:

🟨⬛🟩⬛🟩

Pretty good. Let's put together a few sets of possibilities with the information received:

✖🅣🅐✖🅔:

Stave

Stale

Stage

Stake

State

✖✖🅐🅣🅔:

Slate

Plate

Elate

After looking at 1 yellow and 2 greens, I thought this is going to be a cakewalk to get 3/6, but now I don't think so anymore. So many possibilities to eliminate in the next guess! Let's go one step at a time. The key takeaways:

The probability of 'T' being in the 2nd spot is similar to it being in the 4th spot
High probability of the word starting with an 'S'
'L' appears in 4 of the 9 words. In 3 of those instances, it occurs in the 2nd spot, and once in the 4th spot
The 2nd spot is either occupied by 'T' or 'L'
Other consonants to make the list are 'V', 'G', 'K', and 'P'
2 cases have a double letter, one being double 'T' and another being double 'E'

My strategy for the 2nd guess would be as follows:

There is no way that I can eliminate most of the words from the above list with 1 ideal guess. Therefore, I will have to take some risks here
I will not have 'A', 'E', or even 'T' in the 2nd guess. Instead, I will have 'L' as my 2nd or 4th letter. If it's a black, I will know that 'T' most probably occurs in spot 2. If it's a yellow or green, I should also be able to place the 'T' in its rightful place.
The probability of 'S' occurring at spot 1 is the highest, yet, I will just have 'S' anywhere else and if it returns me a yellow, I will know that the word starts with an 'S'. If its a black, even better. I will have a smaller list of words to choose from.
In addition to this, I will try and include at least 2 out of 'V', 'G', 'K', and 'P' as possible
I understand that in order to fulfil the above criteria, I will also need to include a vowel. It really doesn't matter which one I use. Anything which allows me the flexibility to use as many letters as possible is fine with me.
Refining my strategy further, I will prefer using two out of 'V', 'G', or 'K' rather than 'P', as that would eliminate more words

If Wordle does accept it as a word, I would like to go with 'Glask', or 'Glisk', or 'Glusk' or something like that. Let's try them one by one. Starting with 'Glisk'

After the second guess:

⬛⬛⬛🟨🟨

I think it was a good guess. Oh no, I just realised that the word could either be 'Stake' or 'Skate'. I don't like situations where I have to guess between 2 words, but here I am, once again. Let's just pick one and go for 'Skate'

After the third guess:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Phew! Got it in 3 with a bit of luck in the end. But I think it was a good game overall. Fairly easy word, but could have been misleading with a wrong guess or two. I was curious to see how good of a guess 'Glisk' was. Happy to see it worked well in the end.