Is your Wordle guess doomed?

The first point to make clear - this is all predicated on the unwritten rule that Wordle will never use a word more than once. I don’t think that’s an official rule though.

Supposedly Wordle has a database of 2309 words (pre-New York Times takeover) to choose from (out of around 13,000 English five letter words). That means, if they never repeat a word, the game will be done in October of 2027. Reusing words would avoid that deadline (as would allowing more of those 13,000 words). 

In any case, I think it’s fair to assume words aren’t going to be repeated in the near future, so it’s worth my time doing a test. 

Now that a bit over 700 of those 2309 words have been used, I was curious how many times my recent guesses were words that’d already been used, and thus, were doomed and had no chance of being that day’s word. I didn’t count my start word (I have several that I use, and I’ve verified that none of them have been used - no way I want to jeopardize my 1/6 chances), and I didn’t count the second guess if it was following a first guess whiff, since that guess is going to be an alternative start word, and of course, I didn’t count the final word. So for a 4/6, there were (usually) two guesses that were potentially previously used words.

The pink cells are already used words. The green ones are start words.

I went back two months and looked at my guesses (I’ve taken a screenshot of every day’s play since back in July of 2022), made a spreadsheet, and then checked to see how many of the guesses were doomed.

From April 24th, FIFTY (which gave me an I) and PINTO (which gave me an O) had already been used.

Important point: Doomed guesses are still useful, and I would still happily use a doomed word if I couldn’t think of anything else and thought it might provide some help.

Out of my last 58 plays, there ended up being 123 possible guesses that may have been doomed (an average of 2.3 per day). An astonishing 40 of those 123 were indeed doomed words - words that had no chance of being that day’s word. Basically, a third of my non-start-word guesses were doomed.

I have a spreadsheet where I track the previously used words, so theoretically, I could check each word before I entered it. The problem is that I’m lazy, and just won’t do that (with one exception). I don’t really think doing that is cheating - it’s just being willing to put in extra time and effort. My goal is to finish the day’s game quickly - I will gladly trade a 3/6 that takes 15 minutes for a 4/6 that takes 7 minutes.

Oh, and about that one exception; over the last two months, I’ve twice ended up with an X/6. That’s usually due to a “there are too many options” situation. If I’m on the sixth guess and I can think of more than one potential word, I think it’s worth the effort to verify that the word you are entering isn’t doomed. This would have helped me in one of those X/6 cases, and been worth the trouble. 

In this X/6 from May 11th that still gives me nightmares, TROVE, DROLL, FROCK, and AROMA had all already been used.

Every day another words gets used. As more words get used, the chances of your guesses being doomed go up. 

Go AHEAD and play as USUAL, be BRAVE, don't get UPSET or ANGRY, and have no UNDUE WORRY - ENJOY the HAVOC and WHOOP with GLORY! Maybe even GLOAT with a bit of FLAIR.

That’s it - move along…

PS: I have a shared Numbers spreadsheet that I keep updated with past words (I update it a day late so it won’t give away that day’s word). It also includes a chart to shows the popularity of each letter (which can be useful when working out your guesses). Feel free to look at it here: https://www.icloud.com/numbers/05dIazj8r27ioSxEVwvGKPuiw#Wordle_Words_-_Shared