NYT Wordle #1167: How I solved it

Image courtesy: www.nytimes.com/

Today, the 29th of August 2024, is game 1167 of NYT Wordle. I try to solve this daily and have completed 336 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 led to:

After the first guess:

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

After the debacle yesterday, I would have preferred a better start. Nothing to analyze, going for my standard second guess 'Pound' for this situation. 

After the second guess:

⬛⬛🟩🟩⬛

Before making a list of possible words let me analyze the information received:

• The first thing I notice is that there must be a finite number of letters which legitimately come after 'N'. Those are 'K', 'G', 'Y', 'S'.
• The second thing I notice is that the two letters before 'U' are most likely both consonants, as 'UU' simply can't be a possibility, and there are little to no 5 letter words in the English language which goes like ✖🅘🅤🅝✖.
• There are a finite number of possibilities for the first two letters as well, such as 'SH', 'SL', 'SK', 'SW', 'SM', 'FL', 'BL', 'KN', 'GL', 'KL', 'WH' or something like these. Not saying these are definite possibilities, but that the make-up of words should follow a convention like these examples.

Putting together all the interpretations together, we can now make a list of possible words that I can think of:

✖✖🅤🅝✖

Flunk

Skunk

Flung

Slung

Swung

I will be honest, I am so tempted to go for 'Skunk' because the other words are all in the past tense, and Wordle usually doesn't have such words as answers. But you never know. And if today is one of those days, and if the answer is actually 'Swung', I will be caught between a rock and a hard place for guess 4. So I will resist my temptation and play the elimination game today. For that, I need a word which has 'S', 'F', 'K', 'L', 'W', and 'G'. Oh wait, that's not possible.

So let's strategize:

• I'll use either 'S' or 'F' in the word
• Having an 'L' or a 'K' makes sense. But having both is better. That's because 'L' will indicate a word starting with 'F', and 'K' will tell me that that word is not 'Slung'
• As there could be no other vowel, using anything works really
• Ok wait, I think I can just use 'Flunk' and it will give me a unique input for all the other words

Just to be sure, with 'Flunk', the inputs if the actual answers are as follows would be:

Flunk: 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Skunk: ⬛⬛🟩🟩🟩

Flung: 🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛

Slung: ⬛🟩🟩🟩⬛

Swung: ⬛⬛🟩🟩⬛

Great, let's go with 'Flunk' then

After the third guess:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I did not expect this at all! All blacks to all greens in 3 might be one of the best things to have happened to me in the last month or so. Got lucky perhaps, but Wordlebot thinks my skill was worth 97/99. Awesome! Happy with the comeback. 

Even more happy to beat Wordlebot yet again! 

Yesterday's 5/6 ruined my average somewhat, but good comeback with a 3/6 today to get my Wordle average to 3.252.

See you tomorrow!