Quick winning principles
- Open with RAISE, SOARE, or SLATE—high entropy across common letter positions.
- Never waste a guess confirming what you already know; every tile must test new information.
- Hard mode: pick guesses that fit all greens/yellows but still split the candidate pool.
- Track positional frequency: E in position 5 is far more common than E in position 1.
Ideal strategy
- 1
Entropy opener math: SOARE and SLATE average ~5.8 bits of information on the full answer list; repeat-letter openers like LLAMA waste partition power early.
- 2
Second-guess pivot: after strong opener feedback, switch letter sets entirely (e.g., CLINT after SOARE) rather than cycling S-T-A-R-E variants.
- 3
Yellow constraint exploitation: when letters are yellow, eliminate entire positional subsets before testing doubles. A yellow A rarely means double-A answers.
- 4
Endgame mode switch: at 3 guesses left with <20 candidates, optimize for win probability not entropy—play the most likely word, not the best splitter.
- 5
Hard mode trap avoidance: confirm green positions with words that also test remaining unknowns; ROAST with known R_O_S_ beats STORM if T position is still unknown.