NYT Wordle #1165: How I solved it

Image courtesy: www.nytimes.com/

Today, the 27th of August 2024, is game 1165 of NYT Wordle. I try to solve this daily and have completed 333 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:

⬛🟩⬛🟨⬛

Hmm. Let's make a list of possible words I can think of with the information received:

 

🅒🅡✖✖✖:

Crisp

Crown

Crush

Crowd

Crumb

Crook

Few less probable words:

Criss

Crimp

Crump

Cromp

Crony

✖🅡🅒✖✖:

-

✖🅡✖✖🅒:

-

The key takeaways:

• The probability of the word starting with 'C' is almost 1
• If that is the case, having a vowel in the 3rd spot is almost a guarantee. However, the vowel could be any among 'I', 'O', or 'U'
• It is quite likely that there is just one vowel in the answer
• Among the more probable words, 'S' and 'W' have occurred more times than other consonants such as 'H', 'N', 'M, 'D', 'B', 'P', 'K', and 'H'
• Among low probability words, 'M' and 'P' have dominated the proceedings

My strategy for the 2nd guess would be:

• I will not use 'C' and 'R' in the guess
• This will need some permutation and combination tactics to solve
• I will try and use 2 vowels at least in the guess. The logical ones to be used are probably 'O' and 'U'
• If that is the case, I must use 'S' so as to get info on 'Crisp'
• I should ideally use a 'W' as well so that I can get some info on 'Crook' as well
• I should also use either of 'D' or 'N' to make maximum eliminations I feel

But it will be mighty difficult to have a word like this. Are any of 'Wouns', 'Wouds' or 'Unsow' a word? I will try them one by one. Nah, none worked. Let's find some more criteria then

• On second thoughts, if I am using one of 'D' or 'N', do I really need a 'W'? I can use a 'K' instead. 

Let's use 'Kudos' and see. 

After the second guess:

⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛

Let's see which words survived the elimination process:

🅒🅡🅞✖✖:

Crisp

Crown

Crush

Crowd

Crumb

Crook

Criss

Crimp

Crump

Cromp

Crony 

🅞🅡🅒✖✖, 🅞🅡✖✖🅒, ✖🅡🅞✖🅒, and ✖🅡🅒✖🅞 seem unlikely.

I think 'Crown' is the most logical choice at this point. Not only I feel that is the most likely word out of all the others, I also feel that even if it isn't the answer, it will eliminate 3/4 words in the list irrespective. I just hope that I have not overlooked an obvious word which is the actual answer, because I will be stumped if that is the case. So hoping for all-greens, let's go for 'Crown'

After the third guess:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Fantastic! 94/99 on skill is good. Wordle tells me that after the 2nd guess, the possible answers other than 'Crown' were 'Crony' and 'Bronc'. If it were the latter, I might have tasted my first ever Wordle defeat! Thankfully it wasn't. I also found out today that 'Crimp' and 'Cromp' are not actual words. Overall, 'Crown' was a fairly easy word.

My 209th 3/6 in 335 games, and my average guesses back to 3.248.

See you tomorrow!