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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

I don't like the "exploration" strategy of playing Wordle. Once you have a start word, work onwards from there (aka "hard mode") rather than enter another random guess to narrow down more letters. I know it is a valid strategy, but idk just feels like cheating to me.

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A few days ago I got 4 of 5 letters then lost with 3 wrong guesses at the last letter. I should have spent one turn getting 5 guesses at the last letter instead of spending 3 turns guessing 3 letters.

It's not cheating, it's the better way. If you don't like it, you can turn on hard mode!

It's too bad hard mode only requires that you use positive clues, not negative. I've been trying to push "true hard mode" with my work colleagues. Where every guess must be a potential winner given the information revealed thus far.

So, hard mode, plus no reusing grey letters, plus no using yellow letters in the same incorrect slot.

What, one can re-use a gray letter in hard mode? That's not hard enough!. I find the fun challenge isn't finding the final word but finding valid guesses (i.e. words that exist and aren't using any grays) along the way.

this is my default approach unless really out of options i can think of

but i do slip up at times and jump to punch in a word that i later realize violates one of those yellow rules for instance

Go to the gear in the top right, and enable `Hard Mode - Any revealed hints must be used in subsequent guesses`.

I was playing hard mode accidentally. I didn't realize there was a more optimal way to play.

Without exploring, I just can't see any words that fit the known letters. I might not have that great imagination of words, or be that good to fit them to fixed clues.

Agree. I used one of the strategies over a couple of days and it took all of the fun out of the game. Switching to hard mode brought all of that fun right back.

If you're going to write a program to optimise your guesses then why not just go to the source and pull the answer straight from the encoded answer list? I know people derive fun from these things in different ways but that's kind of where I landed.

Agreed. That strategy hasn't failed me yet, and it definitely makes me think a little harder.

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