Bill Gates Reveals His Wordle Strategy
Wordle has become a cultural phenomenon. Even Bill Gates is a fan, and now he's letting players in on his personal strategy.
This article is more than 2 years old
Wordle, which is the brainchild of John Wardle and is now owned by the New York Times, has become somewhat of a cultural phenomenon. It’s a word game with a simple premise – guess the correct five-letter word in six tries. Perhaps, that simplicity is what makes it so fun and addictive. Multitudes of people each and every day compete with themselves, their families, their friends, and all the other Wordle players out there in the ether. The game appeals to everyone regardless of age, sex, race, or social status. Even the brainiac Bill Gates himself cannot resist getting in his daily dose of Wordle. Now, Gates has decided to give all the Wordle aficionados out there a gift. Gates has shared his own personal Wordle strategy.
In the video, Gates points out some really useful Wordle techniques. Gates advises that for your first guess you should pick a word that has three vowels and two consonants. This will help you both to eliminate letters from your next guesses and/or give you clues as to what letters do comprise the mystery word.
Gates also pointed out that Wordle is a game where it’s very important to have a good understanding of where vowels and consonants usually fall within any given word. Inherently understanding this will atomically give the player an edge, Gates says. The Microsoft founder also couldn’t help but allude to his affinity for English literature. He highlighted how he believes that that knowledge also affords him some additional advantages when playing the game.
Bill Gates isn’t the only resource that has some good advice on how to best play Wordle. The New York Times also reported on strategies that two of its graphic editors, Josh Katz and Matthew Conlen, use. These guys prefer to start every game with the words Crane and Slate. Contradicting Bill Gates’s strategy slightly, those words consist of two vowels in three consonants. The vowels, A and E, are two of the English language’s most common. Similarly, the consonants, C, R, and N as well as S, L, and T, are among the most often found in English words.
It’s also worth noting that these are the guys that created WordleBot. WordleBot is a tool designed to analyze the game and come up with the best possible starting words. New York Times subscribers can use the bot to analyze their own Wordle play styles. Some other great starting words include Raise and Arose. The latter is the one that NY Times Crossword Editor Will Shortz uses consistently.
Overall, how you play Wordle is ultimately up to you. However, one starting word that expert players advise staying away from is Adieu. This is mostly because it doesn’t have enough constants to provide the player with a good baseline. Too many vowels and too few consonants gives the player too many options.
As a final point, while it is the player’s choice to determine what word they wish to start with, experts collectively agree that consistency is best. Think of it this way, if you use the same word each and every day when you play Wordle then the probability that you’ll get the correct word on the first try is ever increasing.
