I created my personal copy of wordle. Basically it's the same as the original one except that I can play multiple times in a day. And it's a single user version. I have a streak that's 100+ days long.
It started off with me trying to figure out the best starting word. I wasn't happy with ADIEU, LEAST etc. Knowing that A or E is yellow doesn't really help me. A GREEN helps a lot more than a YELLOW.
Apparently a paper authored by researchers at MIT says that the best starting word is SALET. My own favourite was SLATE. Though both have the same set of 5 letters one of them could be better than tha other since the letter order could change a yellow to a green or vice versa.
And I was more into trying to find out whether the solution has letters like F, L, C, P etc which are less frequent. Knowing that the solution has these rarer words is a lot of help even if they are less likely to be there in the solution than knowing that the solution has E, S, A etc.
Ideally one should be able to solve a wordle in 3 steps or guesses. Solving in 1 or even 2 steps is sheer luck. With my starting words I still take 4 guesses, so it's not a great way!.
Coming to my personal wordle, Cell F15 throws up a random number which I use and enter in cell F2 to pick out a 5 letter word (either from past solutions or from my master list of 5 letter words depending on whether the value in cell G2 is 1 or 2).
Column R is where I enter my guesses. Column O tells me whether the guess is ok or Bad. "Bad" is when a wrong letter is used or a letter is placed in a wrong position. For example, if I know that F isn't there in the solution and I use F in a subsequent step then the rule engine would display "Bad". If everything is fine, OK is displayed. There are a bunch of standard rules built into the rule engine. I handle issues with multiple occurrences of a letter.
I then decide whether to change the guess or go ahead with the current guess. I do the latter by typing Y in column Q. Once I type Y, my guess is processed and then color coded in columns H-L as well as in the "keyboard" below. The keyboard is display only. You can't use it to type unlike in the NYT website.
Cells BE3-BI8 tell me, for each letter in the guess, how many other words can be formed having all other letters the same. For example in LUNCH, for L I enumerate how many words such as BUNCH, HUNCH exist in the master list.
In cells BK3-BO8, I show how often a letter in the guess comes in that position. For example, L occurs 15% times in the 1st position among all words having L.
Once the guess is entered, I set all the GREEN, YELLOW and GREY letters in cells BE10 to BI14. Cell R13 tells me how many words match these conditions. Smaller the number, closer I am to the solution!. Cell R13 gives the result set in % form.
If I am guessing a word outside of my spreadsheet (for example, i am playing in a different site) and I know some GREEN, YELLOW, GREY data for the word, I enter those letters in cells BK11-BO11 (GREEN here). The yellow letters and grey letters are entered in cells BK16, BL16, respectively. I also set the value in cell in BJ10 to 2 to inform my spreadsheet that GREEN, YELLOW, GREY data is not to be determined based on internal solution but that these days are entered manually. Cells Q13, R13 give me an indication of the % and number of words in my master list that match the criteria.
The icing on the cake are the cells BM16, BN16. If I enter a value 1 in BM16, cell BN16 will display the 1st word in the internal dictionary which exactly matches the GREEN, YELLOW GREY letters entered (if playing on an external site) or determined (if playing within the spreadsheet with the spreadsheet choosing a random word). If I enter 2 in BM16, the next cell will display the 2nd word that matches the criteria.
Cell BO18 is a check number for internal purpose.
Since the solution is picked at random and since there are hundreds of words in the master list to pick from I really don't know which word is the solution in the current game. This ensures fun!
In the final version, i incorporated the ability to arrive at the guesses and ultimately the solution by just entering the GYG details of each guess. A bit of a triumph!
