^That's a pretty slick 5vowel +5/7consonant knock-out there Senryu.
Well done. I like the "strategy discussion" of these games more than actually playing them and doing score-comparison.
[That's actually how fantasy hockey/Dobber forums are for me... discussing the hockey & fantasy is more fun for me than the actual gaming of it. Weird, I guess.]
Back when I played, I had TOEWS and PANIK lined up as my first two, I think.
I play pure WORDLE these days. Sometime Quordle - just to see if I can knock out all 4 in 6 guesses or less. (Which I consider ELITE word solving. Getting any Wordle in 2 or less is luck, not skill.)
I believe TRACE or CRATE has been mathematically confirmed (based on the wordset used) to be the best starting words.
I think there should be a modified "Wheel of Fortune" style Wordle where they give you an opening guess with some letters.
That way, you have to "modify on the fly" from using same starting word.
If you got
_ _ R _ _ (and R is yellow), we would all obviously be guessing unique stuff on WORD-2 than wasting our current opening word1 guess.
My wife uses TRADE... and I told her when she settled on it "Your starting word is better than mine."
Her scores are too.
Though she'll sit and think and take TEN MINUTES on a Wordle.
I play Wordle Speed-Edition... if I take more than 60seconds... I sucked.
I stopped playing the hockey version many months ago.
I just don't like starting my day with more than 5 minutes staring/thinking at a "puzzle".
If you want a challenge, check out contexto. I find this game extremely annoying but it's definitely challenging.
Contexto Game Wordle!
Contexto is a game where you have to find a secret word with an unlimited number of guesses. The words were sorted by an artificial intelligence algorithm based on how similar they were to the secret word.
10 Team, Points Only, Cash League
25 Man Roster (no position), top 20 point getters count at end of month
Keep 20/25 at seasons end, Cut 5 to FA for redrafting
Goalie points W=2pt L=-1pt SHO=2pt
Stamkos, Tavares, Eichel, Mercer, JRobertson, RThomas, Kucherov, Nugent-Hopkins, Tuch, KConnor, Necas, Point, Konecny, SJarvis, Cozenz, Morrissey, Bouchard, Josi, Novak, Tolvanen, Peterka, SBennett
G- Vasilevskiy, Sorokin, Oettinger
"Cleavage is like the sun. You can look, but dont stare.. Unless you're wearing sunglasses."