[jeffbee]

The subset of words that are solutions is an internal data structure of the game. It is clearly cheating to refer to that list. If you are willing to examine the inside of the game's black box, the optimal strategy is to simply extract today's answer.

[pxeger1]

As a human, you already have knowledge which is similar to knowing the internal dictionary: you can judge what other kinds of words Wordle is likely to avoid (uncommon words, proper nouns, plurals). So I don't think it is cheating.

[kupopuffs]

Depends on what you're testing. Are we just testing your memory or recall?

[furyofantares]

Thing is, you can develop a very strong intuition for which words are in that list: they're all common words and mostly "main dictionary entries" (you probably won't find a 4 letter noun or verb with "s" tacked onto the end, probably not "ed" or "es" either)

Certainly using the exact list is a step beyond that; but you can in fact get very accurate at guessing which words might be on it without memorizing the list