NYT Wordle #1166: How I solved it

 

Image courtesy: www.nytimes.com/

Today, the 28th of August 2024, is game 1166 of NYT Wordle. I try to solve this daily and have completed 334 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:

🟨⬛⬛⬛🟩

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

✖🅣✖✖🅔

Style

Stone

Stoke

Stove

Stole

✖✖🅣✖🅔

Brain lagging. Can't think of a word for this

✖✖✖🅣🅔

Spite

White

Quite

Quote

Elite

Unite

Emote (not sure if it's an actual word)

About 12 words. Takeaways (without considering 'Emote'):

• About half the words start with 'S'
• 'T' is either in the 2nd spot or the 4th spot
• Vowels seem to be evenly spread. 5 'O's, 5 'I's, and 3 'U's. One double 'E' and a sneaky 'Y' there too
• Wide range of consonants present. While 'L', 'N', 'Q' have appeared multiple times, 'K', 'V', 'P', 'W' and 'H' have also made it to one word each
• Digging deeper, 'O's mostly occur when the word starts with an 'S'
• On almost all cases, 'T' is in the 2nd spot when the word starts with an 'S'. For all other cases, 'T' is in the 4th spot

It will be almost impossible to eliminate all the words. So a proper strategy must be formulated for guess 2:

• First of all, is important to ascertain whether the word starts with an 'S' or not. 
• If the word starts with an 'S', 'T' is almost guaranteed at the 2nd spot, and 'O' has the highest probability of occurring as well among vowels. So I can consider including 'S' in my guess and removing 'T' altogether. We will try and see if we can somehow confirm the exception 'Spite' somehow as well. 
• Secondly, we can also think of not having an 'O', but rather have 'I', and even 'Y' if possible. 
• Looking at the other possibilities, having an 'I' definitely seems quite prudent, and so does 'L'
• If the word does not start with 'S', the 'U' and 'I' combo could yield some info for me I believe. So, can consider including 'U' as well.
• Taking a second to look back at what I can achieve with the above alphabets, I think it will tell me whether the word starts with an 'S' or not, which vowel/vowels could be present in the word, and the position of 'T'. 
• Therefore, the last logical letter in my opinion should be 'N', which is more frequent than the other letters, and a better option than 'Y'.
• In case these 5 letters, 'S', 'U', 'I', 'L', and 'N' cannot form a meaningful word, the other options could be to use 'Q' instead of 'N'. 
• If I don't find a word fitting that description, I will try using any of 'K', 'V', 'P', 'W' and 'H' instead of 'N'

Let the trial and error begin!

Ok ok, 'Pulis' worked!

After the second guess:

⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛

Let's put together the words which survived from the list first:

Style

Stone

Stoke

Stove

Stole

Spite

White

Quite

Quote

Elite

Unite

Great! Alright, let's see if any other word fits the bill:

🅛🅘🅣✖🅔

-

🅛🅘✖🅣🅔

-

🅛✖🅘🅣🅔

-

🅘🅛🅣✖🅔

-

🅘🅛✖🅣🅔

-

🅘🅣✖🅛🅔

-

🅘✖🅣🅛🅔

-

✖🅛🅘🅣🅔

Elite

✖🅛🅣🅘🅔

-

✖🅘🅣🅛🅔

-

✖🅣🅘🅛🅔

-

I did some thinking and that yielded nothing else. I think 'Elite' is the only possible word left. With the hope that I did not miss out another obvious word, let's go with 'Elite'

After the third guess:

⬛🟨🟨🟨🟩

Noooooo! What did I miss? Ok, have to analyze again.

So the possible combinations have to be among 🅛🅘🅣✖🅔, 🅘🅣✖🅛🅔, 🅘✖🅣🅛🅔, and ✖🅘🅣🅛🅔

No wayyy, is it 'Title'? Have to be, else I will retire from Wordle today! Going for 'Title' and hoping I didn't mess up

After the fourth guess:

⬛🟩🟩🟨🟩

I won't retire, but I might just cry! What is this word?! I must admit, I rushed my 4th guess a little bit. And now I see it. How could I use 'T' in the 1st spot? I deserve a kick.

Let's calm down and think. So the word is 🅛🅘🅣✖🅔 for sure now. I am also sure that I don't know what the actual answer means, or in other words, the word is unknown to me. 

It could be 'Litoe', 'Lithe', 'Litye', or something like that, but I am not sure which could it be. The only one which seems remotely like a word is 'Lithe'. Can't do much, going for 'Lithe' now. If not, will think of some other contingency

After the fourth guess:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Got it finally. I thought I had a fantastic game until guess 3. I could have gotten it at 4, but I messed up so bad. Wordlebot agrees. 4 guesses with 99/99 skill, and one with 0/99. Can't blame myself completely though, I didn't know 'Lithe' is a word.

Well, it is what it is. My 16th 5/6 in 336 games. Nobody wants that, but everyone has an off day once in a while. I'll focus on making it right tomorrow.

See you!