I love the potdle. I play daily so that I can write my response column to Wordle today, but even if I got a new job as an astronaut or secret agent, I would always play it, I would always analyze my results , always obsessed with my average score.
However, I hate today’s game. I hate so much that I need to use capital letters to emphasize.
Don’t worry, I haven’t failed. My sequence is always undefeated at 1,134. Well, theoretically at least – in practice, it has long been lost against the problem of the NYT game application, but I know I have played it every day since January 2022 and I know I have never lost. What is this? Weren’t you worried about my sequence? Well, thank you.
No, I hate it because it has a particular format that acts like my personal kryptonite. And I’m not a superman.
Seriously, I seem to have a mental blind spot when it comes to solving words like this. And either I am not the only one – because today’s game has an incredibly high average score of 4.9.
Obviously, I cannot say more about it without spoilers, so stop reading now if you haven’t played. Go and get weight clues if you need it, complete the puzzle, then come back and find out why I hate it so much. Maybe you will hate it too.
The spoilers for today’s lot, Monday, February 10, 2025, follow below.
My less favorite loss format of all time
Bordle is by its nature a set of models. Some letters are more common than others; Some appear more regularly in specific places; Some go more easily with others. These rules create models and if you play regularly, you can learn to spot them. I dug all this in my analysis of each Lot response.
Today’s game has a good example of a particular model – and as I said above, it’s horrible.
The motif in question is OO, as in Brook, Goose, Groim, founded and some 50 other words that have been or will be, answers to Wordle.
Spoilers are coming now!
The response to the lots of today is goody, and it is almost The most difficult word OO we have had so far, with an average of 4.9 according to Wordlebot, the AI analysis tool in the game.
The only play oo more difficult was Kazoo (5.1), which I don’t really count since it also has a rare K and a rare Z, and it is a stupid word that was added by the NYT without reason What to troll people.
Goody is simply terrible, right? It’s not a good word – pun. I mean what kind of person even says “goody”? A three-year-old child, perhaps, and they should look Bluey Or something rather than playing on board.
It would probably not bother me if I had finished it easily, but I marked a five – shame! – And it reminded me once again that I have a complete mental block when it comes to solving these words.
To prove how much I fight with them, I made a small number while crunching. I kept a trace of each lot that I finished (yes, I am a fun guy) and my average on 1,136 games so far is 3.67. Not too shabby.
However, only looking at the OO words, it jumps at 4.19 – more than half higher! It is even worse than my record on ER games, this other format of the ignoble lot, for which my average is 4.18.
It’s not just me – honest!
And I’m not alone either. I also kept a record for the average Wordlebot score for each match since its launch in April 2022, and the world average is currently 3.96. But for the words oo, he jumps towards a powerful 4.29.
Certainly, everyone finds words even more difficult to solve – the average there are 4.41. So, although the rest of you also fights with OO answers, you do not hate them as much as these bad guys.
Of course, the worst possible format for any Landle, never, would be a combination of OO and ER, right? Oh yes.
We have had only one word so far, Wooer, in September 2021 (match n ° 78). It was well before anyone really played in Wordle, so I only finished it via the batches of lots. And I lost.
In fact, it is my only loss so far, all 1,333 words. It is not an appropriate loss, because it was not played “live” – but it still ranks. Maybe now you can see why I hate words so much.
What is the problem here anyway?
Why are the words OO so difficult? Well, any repeated letter makes a lot more difficult, but I don’t think it’s that as such. Or not only that. After all, as shown by my analysis of each response to Wordle, o is the second most likely letter to repeat, behind A. only A.
No, I suspect that the problem is simply that it is a repeated vowel, and that they are from each other rather than separating.
The vowels can go next to any other letter, generally, which makes it much more difficult to reduce the characters on each side. And because you generally do not get two “A”, i’s or “U’s Together”, o and “e are the only vowels that create this problem.
For example, if you have a word with two LS together – also very common – you will know that they are almost certainly preceded and followed by a vowel, or a y (which is itself sometimes a vowel anyway ). You will not get a word that has been spelled -rlld or something – there will always be a vowel on each side of these LS. Ditto for most other letters.
But with a repeated o, he will have consonants on one side at least one side, probably both – and there are much more. Is it going to be a word like sadness? A word swoon? An oop word like scoop? Will he be preceded by an R as in the broom or a T as in the sector? There are just too many options.
There is a similar problem to play with Er Words, where it is incredibly difficult to find the first two consonants for cower or boxer or something else. But at least I know how to monitor the words ER. With oo words, they always catch me by surprise, even if today is the 29 until now.
So here it is: that’s why I hate words oo. Let me know in the comments below if you hate them too. I bet you do it.
