Wordle Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

How I broke my Wordle streak

aglet and odeon

**This was a couple days late. I backed out a 3 and a 4 from the calculations.**

This is how I broke my Wordle streak on Tuesday, February 17, after 1148 games.

The issue started the day before, when my wife and I were visiting our daughter at college in western Massachusetts. Unfortunately, the speaker for the Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library on Tuesday fell ill on Monday. His doctor recommended that he rest for 48 hours.

So for a couple of hours, I tried to get online to contact other possible speakers, but to no avail. It didn’t help that the hotel’s Internet was wonky, which made the process more stressful and difficult. Finally, another FFAPL convener and I and I suurendered. So my wife and I wouldn’t need to rush back to Albany on Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile, this guy from the local NBC-TV affiliate, whom I did not know, texted me to see if I was still having difficulty with my mail. I said yes, but he didn’t follow up. Fine.

Tuesday morning, the hotel Internet was still spotty. After breakfast, my wife, daughter, and I went to the Mead Art Center. The daughter had to leave for a school meeting, but we eventually met at the Yiddish Book Center.

News

While my wife and I were leaving town, I received another text from the Channel 13 guy. Did I want to be on the news that night? Well, okay, but I’m a couple of hours away. Also, and I didn’t tell him this, my wife REALLY wanted to stop somewhere to eat.

So, while my wife was driving, I was composing in my head what to say to the reporter. About 15 minutes after we got home, the reporter and cameraman arrived and recorded me for about 6 minutes, 30 seconds of which made it into the piece.

We had to unpack, then watch the news. I was about to go to bed when I realized that I still hadn’t done Wordle yet. But I couldn’t get on before the midnight hour.

Once I realized that the streak was done, I was a little sad. I mean, if I had gone down because I hadn’t found the word, THAT would have been okay.

But it really bugged me when I got those notices to keep up my single-digit streak. Getting over 50 somehow was oddly gratifying.

In retrospect, I should have expected that I’d eventually forget to play. My pattern each day was to ask my wife whether she had played yey. But she quit playing on February 2, Groundhog, when Wordle repeated a word, which I believe was CIGAR, the first word. She decided to quit right then. I had no one to remind, which would have aided me in reminded myself.

So it goes.

The last 100 games

Still, zero ones. 11 twos, 51 threes, 26 fours, 11 fives, 1 six, for a 3.4 average. My current average overall for 1500 games is 3.75.

A few interesting games; the numbers indicate how many words are left.

Wordle 1,758 4/6

AROSE 19

ABLED 1

AGLET 1(!)

ALLEY

Aglet is too obscure to have been the word, the WordeBot insisted. Do you know the word aglet?

Wordle 1,751 5/6

AROSE 111

BOWEL 13

MENTO 2

ODEON 2!

ENVOY

Another too difficult word.

Wordle 1,746 5/6

AROSE 81

SLAIN 12

STAPH 2

SPACY 1

SWAMP

After the third turn: It looks as if you’ve narrowed it down to only two remaining words: swamp or scamp.

After the 4th turn: Your guess eliminated one of the two remaining words, but, despite being a valid guess, spacy isn’t one of the words I think will be a solution based on what I’ve learned from playing Wordle. But you’ve narrowed it down to one possible solution!

Wordle 1,748 2/6

AROSE 4

SOBER.

As the old song says, “What’s the use of getting sober when you’re gonna get drunk again?”

Wordle 1,752 2/6

AROSE 12

SWORN

I’m going to keep assuming S is the 1st letter

The games my wife and I play

TULIP

The games my wife and I play are all on the New York Times platform. Spelling Bee is my wife’s game, and she has gotten two Queen Bees in the last month or so. This has nothing to do with Beyonce, BTW. It’s that she found every word in the puzzle.

But she has been so single-minded about the game that she has forgotten to finish her Wordle, which takes far less time. If she asks, I will help her with the Spelling Bee. But I’m not great at finding the pangram, using all seven words. One recent one we both missed was FACTOTUM, a word I used to know but have since faded from my brain.

Connections

My wife and I play together, and we’re pretty good at sussing out the purple, the most difficult. For instance, on New Year’s Eve, the purple was:

Starting with bodies of water: BAY LEAF, CHANNEL SURF, SEA BASS, SOUND BARRIER

It often is words that rhyme in a category. Perrier was really terrier. On December 29, it was the Car brand homophones: INFINITY, MINNIE, OPAL, OUTIE. But figuring the rest of the order was dodgy.

Happy New Year!: BALL DROP, CHAMPAGNE FLUTE, FIREWORKS, NOISEMAKER
Places where things disappear: BERMUDA TRIANGLE, BLACK HOLE, COUCH CUSHIONS, DRYER
Associated with Philadelphia: BROTHERLY LOVE, CHEESESTEAK, LIBERTY BELL, ROCKY

I figured that the disappearing stuff was Blue, the next hardest, and Philadelphia was easier. Nope. Philly was BLUE. At least the NYE clue was yellow, the easiest.

Wordle

First, best wishes to Nola, who had a 938-game streak but has not been able to play regularly due to medical issues. She’s been a big supporter of my streak.

My daughter was watching a YouTube review of a book titled A Five-Letter Word for Love by Amy James. The video, and at least a couple of the GoodReads print reviews, indicate that, despite having a 300-game win streak, the main character has NO idea how to play the game.

I usually play Wordle just after midnight. But if I’m tired, I play when I inevitably wake up in the middle of the night. Then I play Quordle, which I’m not nearly as successful at.

The great thing about Wordle is that I send my results to my Wordle buddy Matthew. I always start with AROSE. If I get a void, or just one yellow letter, I play TULIP….

Wordle 1,652 4/6

AROSE 200

TULIP 12

NATTY 6

BATCH

Even though TULIP was used in the last 50 turns

Wordle 1,629 2/6

AROSE 238

TULIP

If I have a green letter or more than one yellow letter, I use the letters in TULIP. If I have an S in the wrong place, I’ll almost always start with an S. There are a lot more S words than others, I believe. Also, I try to account for seasonal influences.

Wordle 1,651 3/6

AROSE 58

SLEET 4

SPEED

Sometimes, I go with my gut. GRASS is green, and I’m Green.

Wordle 1,642 2/6

AROSE 7

GRASS

I was thinking Scrooge

Wordle 1,638 2/6

AROSE 30

MISER

This felt most Christmasy, whatever THAT means.

Wordle 1,650 2/6

AROSE 13

PRISM

Sometimes, I screw up!

Wordle 1,654 4/6

AROSE 45

TRILL 1

DRUID muff!

FRUIT

Occasionally, it isn’t easy.

Wordle 1,643 5/6

AROSE 43

TULIP 9

RUNNY 3

RUMMY 2

RUGBY

Other times, it’s a gimme.

Wordle 1,635 2/6

AROSE 1

ERASE

One time, I decided to look for a word with an R and two Ys. But then I remembered the season.

Wordle 1,644 3/6

AROSE 43

TULIP 1

MYRRH

Wordle 1400

In the last 100 games, I’ve had 0 1s, 16(!) 2s, 38 3s, 37 4s, 9 5s, and 0 6s. That’s an average of 3.39. Overall, my average is 3.784. I’ve said before that if I got four every day, I’d be fine.

What do I know? Ask Roger Anything

Save Our Republic

What do I know? Sometimes less than I think I do.

I was working on Wordle:

Wordle 1,448 4/6

⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 AROSE
⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ TULIP
🟨🟨🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

The third word I used was DEIGN. I was trying to remember the name of that Christian hymn that used that word, but I couldn’t recall it. So I Googled it, and it was “Beneath the Cross of Jesus,” a hymn I hadn’t sung in a good while. However, the word was FAIN; I totally misremember this.

Deign means to condescend reluctantly and with a strong sense of the affront to one’s superiority that is involved: stoop.

Fain, by contrast, means with pleasure, by preference. Here are the lyrics to the hymn and a recording. Oh, the Wordle word was EDIFY; this was an edifying experience.

model for Edna ‘E’ Mode

I was watching JEOPARDY Masters. The Jeopardy! Category Is… Costume Design With Paul Tazewell, the Tony winner and 2025 Tony nominee, joined the TV game show for an entire category of fashionable answers.

For $600: “In her 50+ year career, this person won a record eight Oscars for costume design.” She was pictured, but I could not remember her name. The animated film The Incredibles (2004) featured a character based on her. Maddening. Of course, it was Edith Head.

This is making me feel a little less savvy, but then I started at some of the recent regular JEOPARDY games from the first week in June. There were some questions on there that nobody got right, but I knew instantly.

Smooth Singers

A 1990s “SNL” sketch called “Coffee Talk” praised this singer for having a voice “like buttah”

Louis Armstrong’s rasp contrasted beautifully with her sweet honey sound, dueting on songs like “Cheek To Cheek” (pictured)

Women on Stamps

Thank you for being a friend—in March 2025, this beloved TV entertainer was honored on a stamp

Geographic nicknames

An abundance of sediment gives the Missouri River the nickname “Big” this

Reelin’ In The Years

5 guys get busted at the Watergate; Harrison Schmitt is one of 2 to be the last to walk on the Moon (but not to moonwalk)

Colleges and universities

Think your school’s got tradition? Thomas Aquinas got a degree & taught theology on the Left Bank at the U. of this city.

The same letter Three Times

Matthew 6:24 warns, “Ye cannot serve God and” this personification of wealth.

The article

A cousin of mine sent me this article from the New York Times from Ken Jennings: Trivia and ‘Jeopardy!’ Could Save Our Republic. “Facts may seem faintly old-timey in the 21st century, remnants of the rote learning style that went out of fashion in classrooms (and that the internet search made obsolete) decades ago. But societies are built on facts, as we can see more clearly when institutions built on knowledge teeter.

“Inaccurate facts make for less informed decisions. Less informed decisions make for bad policy. Garbage in, garbage out.” I was discussing this very issue with a librarian; Google is not always the answer. Some of the current “factoids” generated by an AI-like machine are often terrible, which Jennings addresses.

Working through my existential trauma, you could provide a salve if you would Ask Roger Anything. I intend to reply within the month. I work really hard to make sure it’s accurate; it may even be true!

You can leave your questions in the comments section of this blog or on my Facebook page (Roger Owen Green); always look for the duck.

Oh, the responses: Barbra Streisand; Ella Fitzgerald; Betty White (my wife purchased me a set of these stamps!); Big Muddy; 1972 (contestants guessed 1974 and 1973); Paris (a contestant guessed London); mammon.

Wordle 1200

Wordle World

Still, in the last 100 games, I got zero ones, 19 twos, 45 threes, 27 fours, eight fives, and a single six, for an average of 3.27. My overall average, attributing my two misses as sevens, is 3.84.

As I have noted, if after my first word (AROSE for about the last 900 games), I get either one (or more) green letters or two (or more) yellow letters, I play in “hard” mode. In recent days, I’ve gotten only one yellow letter. In those situations, I then use TULIP.

The numbers after the word are the number of words left, per the NYT WordleBot:

Wordle 1,453 4/6

AROSE 199

TULIP 2

PLAIN 1

PLAID

If I don’t use TULIP, I try to use the letters in TULIP.

Wordle 1,449 3/6

AROSE 7

PURSE 1

REUSE

Wordle 1,439 2/6

AROSE 37

POLAR; the Bot thought I was lucky, but I just used the TULIP consonants

When I haven’t made a lot of progress, I try some go-to words, such DEIGN, LITER, and ROGER.

Wordle 1,448 4/6

AROSE 219

TULIP 40

DEIGN 2

EDIFY

Sometimes, there’s only one available word, but it still takes me a while, in this case because I had not thought of it as a word.

Wordle 1,445 3/6

AROSE 37

ALIGN 1

ADMIN

Now, this was scary.

Wordle 1,425 6/6

AROSE 146

TULIP 22

WOMYN 4

CONCH 2

GONZO 1

BONGO

Change of strategy

For the first few hundred games, I used the words TUBES FLING WORDY CHAMP, though apparently not for this game, unless I made an unforced error. So I would get most of the words, but usually in five or six.

400 games later, I was getting more 2s and 3s, and far fewer 6s. My pipe dream is to reach 100 twos before I reach 100 6s.

I’ve gotten better at it because I discuss the game with my wife and my Wordle buddy Matthew. The Wordle World folks are great, none better than Nola. We were nearly head-to-head before my second miss. Then she got up to 938 before her X/6. She wants me to get to at least 939. I’m crossing my fingers, toes…

I hope the word isn’t cwtch, because I doubt I would solve the puzzle!

1000 games of Wordle

I have played just over 1000 games on Wordle, and I’m surprised. On Wordle World, a Facebook group, somebody asked about our stories regarding the game. Mine is pretty straightforward. I heard about it for months, and as is my general wont, I avoid things that everybody else does. It took me about 3/4 of a year before I played one game. I liked it so much that I’ve participated every day ever since.

Early on, I used a formula to maximize the number of letters I could check. It was TUBES, FLING, WORDY, CHAMP. This uses 20 letters and only misses the K and the more obscure letters JQVXZ. The good news is that it got me a win most of the time, but the bad news is that I was getting lots of 5s or 6s, only rarely a 4. Once, I muffed it all together.

Somehow, probably with the help of my daughter, I ended up using AROSE and TULIP regularly, and it’s been a boom. I’ve only muffed it once since then, on JUDGE, which I played too cavalierly; my last choice was FUDGE.

I still start with AROSE. If I have at least one green or two yellow letters, I try to play it in what they call the hard mode, meaning I have to play the green letter where it shows up and use the yellow letter. If I have only one yellow letter, I might go to TULIP. Regardless, I tend to use the letters in TULIP early on.

Wordle 1,250 3/6 AROSE 94

THINE 2

NICHE

The system

My current streak of over 700 words is helped by the fact that I compare notes after the game with a guy named Matthew. After making a particular choice, I tend to put the number of possibilities left, which has helped me hone my guesses for future games, thanks to the sometimes sanctimonious WordleBot.

I’m trying to reach the streak of a participant on Wordle World named Nola, who had a 938-game streak snapped on September 29. We were neck-and-neck before I muffed JUDGE. She is very encouraging.

Sometimes, I get lucky.

Wordle 1,241 2/6 AROSE 39

STOIC

And other times, I get there by a thread.

Wordle 1,232 6/6 AROSE 39

SPOIL 5

STOOP 3

SWOOP 2

SCOOP 1

SNOOP

When I get an E and R, my go-word is LITER. One day, it will be the answer.

Wordle 1,240 3/6 AROSE 158

LITER 3

INNER

A useful hint: YOWZA is not a word in the Wordle dictionary.

Quordle

For Quordle, I do use TUBES FLING WORDY CHAMP. It works most of the time, though I just went down when I muffed it at 5 a.m. I’ve given up the other multiples, such as Octordle, mostly for time. Interestingly, I hit 500 on Quordle on Thanksgiving, the same day I did my 1000th Wordle.

Connections

My wife and I play New York Times Connections together. We’re much better at it that way than trying to do it separately. We’ve become so proficient at it that we have tried to find all four groups of four words before typing in the first one, attempting to ascertain which one would be purple, the most difficult.

When we do this, we tend to avoid misleading terms. Recently, a category looked like headwear, and I assumed that CAP was one of the four. When we created all four groupings, we realized that CAP had to go with Cover, Plug, and Seal, which were THINGS THAT PREVENT LEAKS. The fourth piece of headwear with Beret, Derby, and Pillbox was Snapback, a word I was unfamiliar with, though I wear such caps about half the year. Understandably, 50% of players put CAP in the wrong category. Oh, and the Times sells a Connections snapback cap; of course, they do.