Quick winning principles
- Open with E, T, A, O, I, N, S—covering ~65% of English letter mass.
- After first hits, switch to positional frequency (R in _R_, NG endings) not global frequency.
- Avoid rare letters until pattern narrows; Q and Z are last-resort guesses.
- Count blanks and remaining wrong guesses before risking a low-probability letter.
Ideal strategy
- 1
Corpus weighting: expert players use Scrabble or ENABLE frequency lists, not naive ETAOIN. Position-conditioned tables improve hit rate 12-18%.
- 2
Pattern branching: with _ A _ E _, prioritize consonants that appear in C_A_E, M_A_E, W_A_E patterns before guessing L or D.
- 3
Endgame risk calculus: with 2 lives and 4 blanks, compute expected value per letter across all matching dictionary words, not single best guess.
- 4
Anti-human bias: when playing as setter, choose words with repeated rare letters (J, V, X) and uncommon digraphs (PH, GH) to break frequency openers.
- 5
Digraph completion: once TH or CH is partially revealed, complete the digraph before branching—TH__ almost always resolves before testing W.