With these three opening words Wordle is hard to miss

I think about Wordel very much My two-step strategy Starting with TRAIN and then trying CLOSE as the second word got me close to 100 wins before I beat it a month ago. I guessed VAULT instead of FAULT. oh my mistake

So I went back to the Wordle drawing board and decided I needed to start a three-word strategy. Usually guessing TRAIN and CLOSE as the first two words gives me a decent number of exact letters that I just need to mix in the right spots. But sometimes it is not. Then I’m staring blankly at a grid, with four guesses left and no idea what to do.

TRAIN and CLOSE, my opening words, use 10 of the 10 most common letters in the Oxford Concise English Dictionary. According to Reader’s Digest. This is great, I thought. But where do I go from there, if it brings me nothing? I tried WHELM for a while, I thought W, H, L and M were all good consonants to get out of the way. It worked well, but not great. I was under pressure.

pumped about ‘UMPED’

But for the past month, I’ve been using this strategy:

1. The first word… train
2. The second word… CLOSE (sometimes CLOSE doesn’t do anything for me, but it’s the capital letters I can’t skip)
3. The third word… UMPED. Yes, “UMPED” is a word. I hate to use E again, but UMPED gives me the last of the five main vowels, the big three consonants, and tries E where it appears most often.

“X” represents the point

Once I’ve guessed these three words, I almost always have a decent amount of letters to play with. Now it’s usually just rearranging the letters to find the Wordle answer.

At this point, I guess I can just write the possible words, but I like to type the possibilities using an “X” in the Wordle grid where I don’t know the letter. Maybe I know the word ends in “ER” and there’s a D in there somewhere. So I might type in DXXER and then try to figure it out from there. (“Diver?”)

I backspace a lot and try different words and make sure I don’t accidentally hit ENTER. But typing enough words with Xes usually triggers something in my brain. (Remember, X is just a space, so use whatever letter you want.)

Last resort…or cheating?

If you are stuck beyond belief and don’t want to lose your line, I have a suggestion. But to be honest, I kind of consider it cheating.

Sites like Crossword solver It allows you to select any word (five letters for Wordle) and then enter any letters you have. Then, the site offers words that match those requirements.

This only helps if you know what position at least two letters are in, although you can cheat if you have letters and don’t know where they are.

New world rules

New York Times Magazine Bought Wordle from creator Josh Wardle in January, and now one of the editors has put himself in charge of the word list. So if you think words have gotten harder, you’re probably right. (“INANE,” Nov. 13 answer, especially sounded like a New York Times answer to me.)

Also, the Times once again explained how collectives work in the game. The game does not use simple plurals like “FOXES” or “SPOTS”, words that just add S or ES to a singular word. But they may use plurals like GEESE. That’s all well and good, but sometimes I guess a simple sum, like LIONS, because I know that’s not the answer, but I’m trying to figure out where the letters are. That’s the fun of Wordle, play it however you want to get the answer. Guess to guess.

I use Wordle on a daily basis. It gives me a little brain jolt and it sure is satisfying to see all those green letters when you guess right.

And while I don’t always use my three-word method, it’s satisfying to have in my back pocket for when I’m really stumped. Hope it helps you too.