[shawn_w]

Until I read some of the comments here, I didn't realize anyone used any other approach with Wordle. A word that doesn't include the known letters is just unnecessarily increasing the number of guesses it takes to solve and doesn't make sense...

[dredmorbius]

Using a fixed set of known words (perhaps with adaptive use based on revealed hits and misses) is cognitively easier than trying to come up with 1) a valid English-language word which 2) fits with the revealed information. If the goal is only to find the actual term, it works quite well.

As others have indicated withing this post, there are other ways to play. I'm not claiming to have found the One True Way, just one that happens to achieve a (usually) successful result.