When you’re green with envy when you see the green emoji squares of everyone on Twitter celebrating theirs Wordl success, these tips will help you improve your game. People go back and forth about whether it takes skill or luck to be good at it Wordl, but the truth is, it’s both. Every once in a while, no matter how good you are, you’re likely to make a mistake.
However, these tips will ensure those losses happen less often and will help you solve the puzzle in fewer tries.
All screenshots are from Wordle Unlimited, which is completely random, so don’t worry any spoilers if you haven’t played today’s game yet.
Use your first few words strategically
Your entry word is the key. To a lesser extent, your second word too. I’m a big fan of solid two-word combinations. Mine is “stand up” and “mouth”. Together they get all five vowels and some of the most common consonants. With the three vowel combination in “elevate,” I get a solid amount of information from just that first try. When I get three letters or more, I skip my second go-to word and start figuring out what goes where.
There are other great combinations too. My partner likes “Laus” and “Zug”. But the key is to sort out your vowels and knock out those important consonants as soon as possible.
If you have a challenge, you can try this worst initial word I guess.
Think about consonant mixtures
About those consonants… They’re crucial in getting from a bunch of yellow letters to green letters. Consonant mixtures are the parts of the word that are not interrupted by vowels. Imagine B and L in “mixture”. There are some keywords that I always exclude or use, and you’ll find that at least one letter of each is included in my two-word combination.
R, S and T blends. L too, hence my partner’s preference for “Laus”. To me that means L is usually in my next guess. C and K or even CK are also found in several mixtures. You can’t get all of these key letters in two installments, but keeping them in mind is extremely helpful when you start narrowing things down.
deductions made
Okay, so you’ve got all your vowels and key consonants out of the way. They’re not quite there yet, and there’s a lot more yellow than green, maybe even quite a bit of grey. No panic. At this point you’ve made a lot more progress than you think. Got an H but no T? All TH words, whether at the beginning or at the end or wherever, are out. Where does it fit? A few questions to ask yourself:
- How many vowels are there? Enough to break up all the consonants, or is there probably a mix?
- Does this letter make sense in all vacancies?
- If this letter can’t go to three places, where can It’s going ok?
For example, there aren’t many words that end in I. Maybe don’t waste any guesswork trying to figure out where I is by putting it at the end. It’s not impossible, but when you’re trying to figure out placement, think horses, not zebras. Letters like K are more commonly used at the beginning or end, especially in shorter five-letter words. Use your knowledge of what words look like to think about what makes sense and where.
Use wildcards
A big help in figuring out what might make sense is to see it visually. I love using X as a placeholder. I can’t tell you how many times trying out combinations by moving that one little letter has helped everything click into place.
Don’t forget the rules of the game… or the language
One of the biggest mistakes you can make, especially when you’re breaking a sweat at guess five or six, is that letters can be reused. Wordl will also tell you if this is the case if you try putting one of the options in yellow or hopefully green and the other in gray. If both are yellow, or one is yellow and the other is green, you have a double in your hand.
This is most important when you have very few vowels. Maybe it has a few silent consonants, but maybe it only has two E flats. It can also help to use a double letter and figure out where the heck it leads, regardless of how many there are.
And don’t forget, Y can be a vowel. Think “gym,” “thyme,” or “guy.” This Y does some serious vocal work. The tricky letter is often used at the end of words, so don’t forget the forgotten vowel-consonant stepchild.
Also, my dear Wordl Friends, don’t forget to have fun. At the end of the day it’s just a game. And you don’t have to share this X/6 if you don’t want to.
I wish you the best of luck in your letter-filled endeavors.
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