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This is great, but it's just a first-order strategy! Once your opponent knows you're following these (quite rational) rules, she could pick words where the rules fail particularly badly.

I look forward to seeing your analysis of how to deal with that :)

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The strategy given isn't to solve the puzzle, but to get at least one letter on the board. So if you look at the table at the end, the worst case is a three-letter word that only contains a K out of the letters given, which is the worst case scenario on that entire board. Assuming your opponent sticks to the dictionary there is no way for them to ruin this strategy, only push you into the worst cases given, which once you figure out what's going on will play to the guesser's advantage, not the word-chooser.

I was hoping for a little list at the end saying "By the way, if you're playing against someone who's using this strategy, the best word to play is: xyzzy" (or whatever word it actually would be)

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