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Wales Online

Entertainment

Ffion Lewis

Wordle 229: Answers, tips, tricks and previous words for viral puzzle

Wordle (Organization)

A simple word game has taken the world by storm since it launched last year, with hundreds of thousands of people now playing it each day.

After going viral at the start of 2022, chances are if you've got a Twitter account your feed has been filled with small green, yellow and black tiles - and Wordle is to blame.

Josh Wardle, who lives in Brooklyn but is originally from Wales, created the game last autumn for his puzzle-loving partner, but after word got round about the addictive - but simple - game, the world joined them.

After the game became an addiction among his family, Mr Wardle thought he might be onto something and released it to the world in October. Last week more than 300,000 people played on a single Sunday.

“I think people kind of appreciate that there’s this thing online that’s just fun,” he said during an interview with the New York Times.

“It’s not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It’s just a game that’s fun.”

A key benefit of the game is how it limits players to one game per day. It has left people wanting more.

“It’s something that encourages you to spend three minutes a day,” he said. “And that’s it. Like, it doesn’t want any more of your time than that.”

Wordle: The Rules

The rules are simple. Each day you need to guess a new five-letter word. The game gives you six rows with five boxes in each row. You start by entering a five-letter word. If any letters in that word are correct, they’ll turn green (for the right letter in the right spot) or yellow (for the right letter in the wrong spot). Incorrect letters are blacked out.

Wordle Tips

While a bit of luck and creative thinking goes a long way with Wordle, there are also some tips and tricks that will get you on your way.

The first one requires a bit of research, but knowing letter frequencies and which letters feature in the most five letter words can go a long way.

An analysis of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (9th Edition, 1995) found the 12 most common letters were E which came up in 11.16% of words, A which came up 8.45% and R at 7.58%.

Other tips include:

Despite the creator being from the UK, Wordle is based on American English.
Letters can, and often do, appear twice in words.
From this New York Times article , we know that Mr Wardle used words his wife recognised to create the list. Each one will only appear once, but you should know it.
Remember all the tips from Scrabble, like Qs need Us, and Zs are uncommon.

Good starting words for Wordle

Basing your first answer on some of the most frequently used letters is a good place to start. Some examples include:

NOTES
RESIN
TARES
SENOR

From here, it would be good to use some other frequent letters in your second guess. From the dictionary mentioned above, I,O,T,N & S are all good options.

It's worth noting that you do not have to use any confirmed letters in your subsequent guesses, which can often be a good way of sussing out some other possible letters used.

That is unless you turn on 'hard mode' in settings. This forces you to use any revealed letters in your subsequent guesses - stopping you from playing letter frequency words the whole way down.