Study 04 Exhaustive solver test
Possible answer—or
the most useful guess?
We played every word in a curated 2,315-answer corpus to compare familiar candidate ranking with guesses chosen for maximum information.
Result Every answer played
More information. Fewer guesses. No failures.
Candidate frequency
3.65average guesses- Solve rate
- 99.22%
- Worst case
- 8 guesses
- Failures
- 18
- Opening word
- SLATE
Entropy + probe guesses
3.43average guesses- Solve rate
- 100.00%
- Worst case
- 6 guesses
- Failures
- 0
- Opening word
- TARSE
The information strategy saved 0.22 guesses per puzzle on average. It solved 823 answers faster, tied on 1,014, and was slower on 478.
Method Same engine as the live tool
What the test actually does
The test treats each of the 2,315 curated words as the hidden answer, applies Wordle’s exact green, yellow, gray, and repeated-letter rules, and continues until the answer is solved.
The baseline may choose only from answers still possible and ranks them by position-specific letter frequency. The new strategy may also choose from a separate pool of 14,855 accepted guesses when a non-answer separates the remaining possibilities more efficiently.
Both the live solver and this test import the same feedback and ranking engine. The published numbers come from the generated benchmark artifact; the page contains no manually entered performance totals.
Distribution Information strategy
How many guesses did it need?
Scope Honest limitations
A reproducible model—not tomorrow’s private answer list.
The answer corpus is the original curated Wordle solution set, not a prediction of The New York Times’ private editorial choices. It excludes dictionary-wide proper-name noise such as Aaron, Abbas, and Abdul.
The accepted-guess pool is a dated compatibility snapshot. The New York Times can add or remove accepted guesses, so UnscramblerHQ versions the list and publishes its checksum instead of claiming permanent access to a private dictionary.
Normal mode permits information probes. Hard mode restricts suggestions to still-possible answers.