Effective Wordle Heuristics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that simple heuristics can quickly generate effective Wordle strategies by focusing on possible solutions, avoiding the need for exhaustive searches and unfamiliar words, thus making daily strategy updates practical.

Contribution

It introduces a heuristic-based approach for creating effective Wordle strategies efficiently, reducing computation time compared to exhaustive methods.

Findings

Heuristics produce strategies nearly as effective as exhaustive searches.

Focusing on possible solutions suffices, avoiding obscure words.

Daily strategy generation becomes feasible with simple heuristics.

Abstract

While previous researchers have performed an exhaustive search to determine an optimal Wordle strategy, that computation is very time consuming and produced a strategy using words that are unfamiliar to most people. With Wordle solutions being gradually eliminated (with a new puzzle each day and no reuse), an improved strategy could be generated each day, but the computation time makes a daily exhaustive search impractical. This paper shows that simple heuristics allow for fast generation of effective strategies and that little is lost by guessing only words that are possible solution words rather than more obscure words.