In January, more than two million people around the world were playing Wordle, the viral sensation that has since been acquired by the New York Times. It has become common on social media for players to post their score using green and yellow emoji boxes, that break down how many tries it took to solve the daily world.
This practices has raised questions about whether all players receive the same word.
The short answer is yes.
On a given day, players around the world have access to the same puzzle. However, the game updates based on the timezone of the player, meaning that some have access to a new word more earlier than others.
This means that players in the United States are some of the last to have access to the new word of the day.
What time does Wordle update?
The game will reset for each player based on their own timezone around midnight each day.
Has Wordle gotten harder since its acquisition by the New York Times?
NYT: No, we did not make Wordle harder. We promise.
Also NYT: Today’s Wordle is KHYBX — which everyone knows is a popular 11th century Latin delicacy derived from quicksand extract. Duh.
The New York Times formally began hosting Wordle on 10 February. We compiled a list of words selected by the news organizations since then:
What words have been selected by the New York Times?
2/10: Pause
2/11: Ulcer
2/12: Ultra
2/13: Robin
2/14: Cynic
2/15: Aroma
2/16: Caulk
The NYT has denied any such allegations and when looking to the list of words chosen, only a few seem more difficult compared to those selected before the acquisition.
However, with so few words selected by the NYT so far, any real changes to the game will take longer to notice and document.
“We're now busy revamping Wordle's technology so that everyone always receives the same word. We are committed to ensuring that tens of millions of people have a gratifying and consistent experience, every day,” NYT added.
Though usually Wordle will only accept one correct solution per day, occasionally it has rebelled against the norm and deem two different answers acceptable. This is due to changes the New York Times made to Wordle after it acquired the puzzle game.
Since there are 2,315 possible target words in Wordle, the probability that you will guess the target in exactly one try is 1/2315 = 0.000432. In fact, it doesn't matter which of the 2,315 words in the dictionary you choose to use as your initial guess since the probability of success is always 1/2315.
Human Statistics Playing Wordle. On average, Wordle players can guess the correct word on their first try in only 0.02% of games. This suggests that players may start with a word that is not a possible answer in many cases, as the actual success rate is twice as low as the theoretical best (0.043%).
Multiple Twitter users at the time have said the glitch occurred because the Times thought the original word for the puzzle, HARRY, might be too “obscure,” since it is commonly known as a proper noun, instead of a verb.
Well, there's not too much strategy to getting Wordle in 2. You guess your first word, get some information, and make a second guess from the Wordle answer list consistent with that information. Usually, you can't uniquely identify the answer after one guess so there's no way of guaranteeing success.
Keep in mind that Wordle tells you when a letter is not duplicated, too. If you use two of the same letter in a word, and only one of them turns yellow or green, then there is only one copy of that letter in the correct Wordle answer.
The Strategy Behind the Best Wordle Starting Words
If you figure out which vowels you're working with, you can quickly narrow down your list of potential solution words. By this reasoning, words like "ouija," "adieu," "audio," and "raise" would be the ideal first guesses in a Wordle game.
As you can see from the list below, E is by far the most common letter used, appearing 376 times (and counting), followed by A with 339 and R (302). Also topping 200 are T (254), O (250), L (218), and I (203). That's the same order as we found when we analyzed every Wordle answer.
What is the probability of getting the word in Wordle correct in 1 try? Wordle has about 2314 possible answers. So the probability of getting it right on the first try is 1/2314 = 0.0004=0.04% approximately.
While this is a very real phenomenon, don't worry — it has an easy fix and a valid reason. It appears that if a player has kept the browser open that they continuously use for Wordle and have not refreshed their page, they will be playing the original version of the game from before the Times' purchase.
This practices has raised questions about whether all players receive the same word. The short answer is yes. On a given day, players around the world have access to the same puzzle. However, the game updates based on the timezone of the player, meaning that some have access to a new word more earlier than others.
Introduction: My name is Melvina Ondricka, I am a helpful, fancy, friendly, innocent, outstanding, courageous, thoughtful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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