The first time I ever played Wordle was one year ago tomorrow – January 22, 2022.  I have played the official daily Wordle puzzle every day since then, for a grand total of 365 times.  So, as of right now, on January 21, 2023, I have one full year’s worth of Wordle scores under my belt.  In honor of the one-year mark, I thought I would take some time on here to share my progress and some Wordle memories from the past year.

In case you would like some additional background on Wordle before reading ahead, I have two previous Wordle-related posts on this blog.  First, if you don’t know how Wordle works by now but you still want to learn how to play, you can check out my original Wordle post from February 5, 2022 in which I explain how Wordle works and provide my initial experience with the puzzle just two weeks after playing it for the first time.  And I also have a follow-up post from May 1, 2022, in which I provide a recap of my first 100 days of playing it, as well as information regarding Nerdle (the math puzzle) and other Wordle parody games.  This post will be a similar entry to the one from May, except this one will serve as a one-year update rather than just 100 days.  Also, if you read all the way to the end of this one (or at least scroll to the bottom), I’ll have a new game to tell you about – the Wordle party game.

My Wordle Statistics

To date, there have been 581 official daily Wordle puzzles, although I have only played the past 365 of them.  Out of those 365 puzzles, I have correctly solved 361 of them, and missed 4, for a 99% winning percentage.  More accurately, it’s more like 98.9%, but that rounds up to 99%.  I also once correctly solved 148 in a row.  You can see my scores above.  Yes, it says that I’ve only played 363 times, but there were two days immediately after the New York Times purchased Wordle, in which I played but it did not save my score.  So, I really have played it 365 times, with the two unsaved puzzles being a 4-guesser and a 5-guesser.  I suppose you’ll just have to take my word on that.

Based on my scores above (and with my two missing scores factored in), I have solved 361 puzzles with an average of 4.0997 guesses per solve.  According to my 100-day Wordle blog entry from May, I had a 99% winning percentage then as well, but I was solving them at an average of 4.22 guesses per solve back then.  Apparently, I must be improving, as my average number of guesses is coming down.  For as long as I decide to play this, however long that is, I have a goal of eventually getting my average number of guesses down to 4.00.  That may take a while though, if it ever happens.  And I’d like to still be able to maintain a 99% success rate.  We’ll see if that happens.

Is “parer” a word?

But what about the four words I missed?  The words I have missed so far are CATER, LABEL, and LAYER.  Oh, yes, and the infamous day on September 16, 2022, in which the New York Times made up the word PARER and decided to make it a Wordle, just to mess with everyone playing it that day.  And don’t tell me that PARER was a legitimate word, even if it’s in the dictionary.  The proper term for it is “paring knife.”  Nobody calls it a “parer.”  Going forward, I will only accept PARER as a word for the specific purpose of playing Scrabble, Upwords, or Quiddler – but not to refer to a paring knife.  Also, I hereby decree that the only legitimate way to use “parer” in a sentence is, “Hey, remember that time the Wordle word of the day was PARER?”

As you can see above, I figured out after 4 guesses that day that the solution would be PA_ER.  The four possible solutions that I thought of were PAGER, PALER, PAYER, and PAVER.  So, I tested the word GLORY with my 5^th guess, hoping to get a G, L, or Y.  When none of those appeared, I knew the answer would have to be PAVER, as that was the only legitimate word left.  But apparently not.  Who at the New York Times can I complain to about this?

So, including the PARER fiasco, I have technically missed four words.  All four of the words I have missed so far have A as the 2^nd letter and E as the 4^th letter.  I believe this is probably because there are too many words with that structure, and with that many possibilities, it can sometimes be difficult to narrow it down.  Also, three of those words that I missed went “_A_ER.”  So, now I don’t look forward to getting those “_A_ER” words.

What is a good score?

With a 99% solve percentage with a guess average of 4.0997, I often wonder, are these good scores?  I tried to do a little digging on the average Wordle score.  While there are quite a few articles from last year (when it exploded in popularity) featuring statistics on the average winning percentage and average guess number at the time, I couldn’t find very much recent data.  However, I did find this article by Photutorial from December 15, 2022, in which it states that players are unable to guess the correct word in 2.92% of games.  Based on this data, the average success rate would be 97.08%.  In addition, the article notes that the global average for solving Wordle is 4.016 guesses.  So, my 4.0997 guess average would be slightly more than that, but it’s close.

With that said, the article also notes that the above data is dependent on users sharing their results on Twitter.  (My thought is, who actually does that anymore?)  They note that players who take 5 or 6 guesses or fail to solve the puzzle altogether might be more reluctant to share their score.  As such, the article speculates that the actual data might be a bit worse than the reported data.  So, who knows how accurate this any of this is.  But if we use the above data to at least give us some idea, then I’ll certainly take my 99% winning percentage, and hopefully my 4.0997 guesses per solve is within the average range.

Nerdle

I’ve previously mentioned some other Wordle-like parody games on this blog as well.  The ones that I have played include Worldle (guess the country), Statle (guess the state), Factle (list the top five answers to a specific question), Factle Sports, and Heardle (guess the song), including the 80s, 90s, and 2000s versions.  Although, I don’t necessarily play all of those every day.  The one other game that I do play every day would be Nerdle, where you have to guess the math equation.  As of today, I have played 344 games of Nerdle, with my current scores below:

I have correctly solved 100% of the Nerdle puzzles I have played with an average of 3.45 guesses per solve.  So, I apparently do better at Nerdle than I do at Wordle.  Then again, I am a math person anyway, so maybe that helps.

Other Nerdle variations include BiNerdle, Instant Nerdle, Speed Nerdle, Mini Nerdle, Micro Nerdle, and as of just recently, Maxi Nerdle.  I usually stick with just the traditional game, but feel free to try those other Nerdle variations if you’re so inclined.  Or, if you’re not familiar with Nerdle but would like to give it a try, it can be found here: https://nerdlegame.com

Wordle Party Game

Back to the original topic at hand, one item that I got for Christmas was the Wordle Party Game.  This might be a fun 2-to-4-person game to try out for those of you who are into Wordle.  The game includes dry erase boards, dry erase markers, and plastic yellow and green tiles.  Each round, one person serves as the judge and secretly writes down a 5-letter word of their choosing, and the other 1 to 3 players write down their guesses and each try to solve that word.  The judge uses the yellow and green tiles to track each player’s progress.  At the end of the round, each player’s score is the number of guesses it took them to solve it.  Then, a new person is the judge for the next round, and play continues.  Those are the rules as I understand them anyway.  I have not yet actually played this game, so that’s as much as I know.  I’m afraid I can’t provide a full review of the game just yet.  But if you’re into Wordle and you’re looking for a 2-to-4-person game to play with the family or at a game night somewhere, this might be a good one to get.

So, what about you?  If you’re still playing Wordle, do you have any interesting stories or scores to share?  How many people are still playing it regularly?  Or are you someone who’s still not playing it out of spite?  How long will this game continue until they run out of words?  Or until it dies out in popularity?  Feel free to leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.  Until next time, when I come back on here and write about another yet-to-be-decided topic, this is Ryan, wishing you a happy New Year 2023.

Wordle Site: https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html