[noxvilleza]

I did some analysis on this last week [https://noxville.medium.com/raising-the-wordle-first-guess-b...], ROATE left the lowest average valid answers (60.424) but 195 in the worst case. RAISE was the second best average (61.0) but a much better worst case of 168 words. Both are just heuristics, there might be a better word than either if the game were solved.

[sbarre]

I wonder if ROATE is even in the list of words. I'd never heard it and I'd like to think I have a decent vocabulary.

The article says they whittled it down from 12,000 words to around 2,500 words, aiming for words that most(?) people would be familiar with.

[noxvilleza]

Yes, it's in the list of guessable words - however it's not a valid answer word. You need to use the WORDLE word list in order to evaluate how good or bad your initial guess is, using another word list will provide distorted results.

[sbarre]

Yes that's what I meant, is it valid in Wordle specifically.

[noxvilleza]

That's what I was clarifying with 'Yes, it's in the list of guessable words - however it's not a valid answer word'.

They have two lists of words: one is a list of possible answers, and another is a list of extra (valid) words which can be guessed (in addition to the words in the answer list). Sometimes it might be better to use a non-answer word as a guess: the best case gets worse (since you cannot win immediately) but the average case and worst case both get better.

[sbarre]

Ah I understand, thank you for clarifying!