[justhalf]

Hard mode is interesting, but I think it's not better just because you can't use canned guesses. Canned guesses is a valid strategy (and I don't feel it's cheaty, as another commenter mentioned, you still need to guess the word even if you have 4 yellow letters).

In hard mode, you can be unlucky and had to guess based on luck. For example, if your first guess is POUND, and the hidden word is MOUND, you have no choice to simply guess one by one from the list BOUND, FOUND, HOUND, MOUND, ROUND, SOUND, WOUND. Which is not interesting (this is to showcase an extremely unlucky example in hard mode, not saying that hard mode is bad. Instead, this shows that you need to be more thoughtful of your guesses. I would say you would try to avoid the correct letters first, so you can eliminate as many letters as possible. Which, of course, makes it harder, and so it's called hard mode)

Also, from the original Mastermind game, guessing inconsistently with previous guesses is one of the best strategies too, for the same reason: allowing to remove more possibilities in one guess.

[dredmorbius]

Which suggests that for Hard Mode, your best bet is to seek out less likely terms first.

The question is whether or not the goal is to achieve a very low tries score, or if you want to solve most or all challenges.

The canned-guess easy-mode strategy optimises for the latter.

[justhalf]

Yep, that's what I mentioned too. Although too be strict, the word you have to guess to minimize the number of tries is the one that minimizes the worst case scenario. And, if a computer is doing this, it is achieved by considering all possible solutions, then try each reasonable guess for each possible solution to determine which guess would lead to the least number of try.

Now, a human cannot consider all possible solutions (especially in the first 2 guesses), so human strategy will be different from computer strategy. As we agreed, it is to guess the least likely word. And this canned guesses turns out to do just that as well. Here I assume some flexibility when using the canned list, that is, (1) the order is flexible, and (2) if you've found some confirmed letters already, you decide which of the canned word list would be most useful next.

For example, for me I use my canned guesses for the first two guesses, and decide the third based on the first two. If I still need to get more letters, I go through my list. If I think I got enough to start going towards the solution, then I do that. It is still an interesting game since there are still decisions to be made.

(Also, I think hard mode is not even solved yet by a computer, it might be possible that there is no strategy where all possible solutions can be guessed in 6 tries. This increased risk might be something that people find interesting too, so that's one of the appeal of hard mode).

(Also, as I said, this is not a critic about hard mode not being interesting. It is interesting. My point is to simply defend easy mode from the claims that it is not interesting [from what "hard mode is far more interesting" seems to suggest], and nothing personal. I appreciate hard mode too for its interestingness, and the people who like it better over easy mode. I'm not against people claiming that hard mode is more interesting than easy mode)

(Oh, I just realized you are the one posting on the canned guess list. I'm also using canned guess list. My list is AISLE, PHONY, TRUCK, and the fourth guess onwards I usually try to guess based on the clues so far)