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3 guesses makes me feel good (and lucky), four is what I expect for most puzzles, and 6 either makes me feel bad, or is a sequence like this:

BLA*E

Where I try

BLADE

BLAZE

BLARE

BLAME

Those are frustrating, but not my fault (assuming I don't re-use any letters).

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Spending another guess to reduce that search space is the right move (assuming you're not playing hard mode).

A guess like DREAM would guarantee the next guess is correct.

Doesn't work on hard mode, which forces you to use previously guessed letters

This is why I switched off of hard mode, after trying it a few times. For me while it was technically harder, it lost some strategic depth and the games became a lot less interesting.

The game isn't balanced for hard mode. It's actually possible to guess 4 of the letters correctly on the first guess and still not win.

This is why, IMO, hard mode is bad.

It's in an important sense actually easier! Sure, good play results in more guesses than in not-hard-mode, but that would be like saying a 100m sprint is easier than a 2-mile race because the latter takes longer. The more interesting measure of difficulty is how hard it is play optimally. And since the search space for not-hard-mode is bigger, I'm pretty sure it's harder.

But more importantly, hard mode is also less fun, and this thread demonstrates exactly why: the creative aspect is coming up with le mot juste for quickly honing in on the right answer. Hard mode takes away your tools to do that and sometimes even results in a thoughtless guessing game.

I kinda like when "hard mode" makes you have to come up with a possible word even if it seems impossible to think of one, which can be a satisfying puzzle, not having the restriction makes it easy to think "okay screw it, I'm going to spend a guess to search for letters".

Should be named strict mode, not hard mode.

It only forces you to reuse greens. I like to play in hard hard mode in my head, where each guess must be consistent with everything previous. Still not actually hard though, obviously.

I didn't even know hard mode existed! I came to the game late.

I hate to be BLASE but I don’t think that would always work.

Looks like there's 7 words that could match BLA-E (just looking at /usr/share/dict/words)

'blade', 'blake', 'blame', 'blare', 'blase', 'blate', 'blaze'

wordle tends to be more familiar words, so I'd ignore blate and blake. So now we have D, M, R, S, Z

Doesn't look like there's a word that has 4 of these letters to guarantee on next guess. So need to try for the most likely 3 letters. Could be 2 more guesses, but still ends up better than a 1 in 5 chance.

I believe only 4 are in the wordle word list though: - blade - blame - blare - blaze

I pulled the wordle word list from the page source of the game.

DERMS, DORMS, DRAMS (mentioned), DRUMS

ah my word list was missing plurals, good call

DRAMS

> Spending another guess to reduce that search space is the right move (assuming you're not playing hard mode).

This, again, depends what your goal is, or what you consider "winning". If you're only focused on avoiding losing, then yes this is the right move. If you're trying for a low score, it's not as clear, and hard mode may actually be "easier" in many ways.

No it absolutely is the way to win in the fewest moves. When you have more than 2 equally possible words then the next word should be a choice that reduces the search space rather than going for a guess.

It's the way to win in the fewest words on average.

If you want to maximize your number of three-guess-wins even if your 6-guess-failure rate is higher, it is obviously can't be a correct strategy to use your third guess on a word that you know can't be correct.

It's a gamble. 20% 3-guess win/80% 4-guess to FAIL or 100% 4-guess win.

Maximizing information from each guess until the answer is down to two candidates minimizes the number of guesses needed to win.

Sure, my point is that the metric "minimize mean number of guesses to win" isn't axiomatically the objective function: the 6 threshold already suggests that many people would rather have a "guaranteed 6 and average 5" rather than "average 4 but fail 5% percent of the time".

If someone considers a 4 to be a soft-failure then they will prefer (3,6,6) to (4,4,4) even though the latter is a lower mean number of guesses: it's a higher count of 4+ 'failures'. The strategy that considers (3,6,6) a better result than (4,4,4) wouldn't guess "dream" in the above example.

DREAM wouldn't help unless the anser is BLAZE.

If you don't like this, try https://qntm.org/files/absurdle/absurdle.html

Well, technically you could have realized the ambiguity in this case, and guessed a word like RAZED to clear it up.

Not if you are in hard mode.

Do people actually use hard mode? Seems like its only "harder" in the sense that it forces you to play less intelligently.

This is why I turned it off. It is "hard mode" in the same way that driving a screw with a hammer is "hard mode."

I find it fun because it prompts me to find the optimal guess (given hard mode). Playing easy mode I'm much more happy to do the first word that comes to mind and sort of fits.

Hard mode emphasizes vocabulary over math.

Very anecdotal and personal, and non-technical, but I believe wordle words are usually very simple ones, so in your case, BLAME will stand a better chance than the remaining three. BLADE could be second.

'blade', 'blame', 'blare', and 'blaze' are all words that will be used in a wordle puzzle one day, and all equally likely to be used since it uses all words once.

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