The Morning: Wordle smarter

Forget ADIEU: There are better ways to start your game.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story December 17, 2023 By Josh Katz and Aatish Bhatia Good morning. We're covering lessons from the past year of Wordle — as well as Israeli hostages, Donald Trump and "Sailor Moon." Eden Weingart/The New York Times Half a billion People like playing Wordle. In the past year, millions have played the game every day, and then shared, discussed and debated how they tried to win. For the first time, we've analyzed how people played in half a billion of those Wordle games and compared them with the strategies that our WordleBot recommends. Below are four things we learned. 1. Of the top 30 starting words, ADIEU is the most popular but least efficient. Many, many words have been written about the best opening word for Wordle. Answering this question, in fact, was one of the motivations behind WordleBot's development. In its robot brain, a handful of words — SLATE, CRANE, TRACE — are best. For human Wordle players, the most popular opening word by some margin is ADIEU. AUDIO, another four-vowel word, is the fourth-most popular. The strategy seems to make sense: Figure out the vowels, and the other letters will fall into place. Our new analysis shows, though, that starting with ADIEU or AUDIO puts human players at a disadvantage. How much of one? On average, players who started with ADIEU needed about a third of a turn more to solve their Wordles compared with players who started with SLATE. Based on 515 million Wordle games completed between Dec. 1, 2022 and Nov. 30, 2023. Even worse: While 1.7 percent of SLATE starters failed to solve a Wordle on average, the chance of failure with ADIEU more than doubles, to 3.6 percent. 2. People like holiday words: PARTY, HEART, BUNNY and GHOST. The bot always recommends starting with SLATE, which we realize can be boring. Human players, freed from the burdens of mathematical precision, can and do change their Wordle openers throughout the year. (Players often explain their daily selection in the Wordle Review.) Here are the top words that jumped in popularity on specific days: Christmas Day (Dec. 25, 2022): MERRY, GIFTS, PEACE New Year's Day: YEARS, PARTY, HAPPY, FRESH Valentine's Day: HEART, LOVER, CUPID St. Patrick's Day: LUCKY Easter: RISEN, BUNNY Coronation of Charles III and Camilla (May 6): CROWN, ROYAL Halloween: GHOST Thanksgiving: THANK, GRAVY, FEAST Another fun pattern: PARTY has a little spike every weekend. 3. The most difficult words for players often started with "J." The hardest words to solve tend to be those that start with J, end in Y or have a double letter somewhere. The five most difficult words of the past 12 months, as measured by turns to solve: JAZZY (June 1): 5.82 turns to solve JOKER (April 25): 5.69 turns NANNY (June 3): 5.68 turns JUDGE (Dec. 26): 5.57 turns RIPER (Feb. 22): 5.52 turns If you look by solve rate, the hardest Wordle puzzle was JOKER, with only 71 percent of players finding the solution. 4. SLATE is on the rise, while CRANE is getting less popular. People are still changing their starting words. SLATE, STARE and ADIEU have grown, while CRANE has fallen. Even top words still see spikes: ADIEU was featured in the Mini Crossword in August, for example, and jumped in popularity. Read our story to see more data, as well as three other things we learned, and try WordleBot for your daily Wordle score and analysis. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT NEWS Israel-Hamas War Protesters in Tel Aviv on Saturday. Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images The Israeli military said three hostages mistakenly killed by its troops had been unarmed and bearing a makeshift white flag. The killings could force Israel to reconsider its strategy in Gaza. The U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, will visit Israel this week as the U.S. pushes leaders there to scale back the military campaign. The foreign secretaries of Britain and Germany advocated a "sustainable" cease-fire in a joint opinion article for The Sunday Times of London. Gaza is experiencing its longest phone and internet blackout of the war, leaving Palestinians virtually cut off. The U.S. and Britain shot down more than a dozen attack drones over the Red Sea, many fired from militant-controlled areas of Yemen. Years before Oct. 7, Israeli agents shared secrets about sources of Hamas funding with the Israeli and American governments. Nothing was done to stop the flow of money. Politics As President Biden considers sweeping migration restrictions, polls show growing support for such measures from Democrats — a sign of how drastically the politics of the issue have shifted. At a rally in New Hampshire, Donald Trump quoted Vladimir Putin to support his case that the criminal indictments he faces are political payback. The chief strategist for the leading Ron DeSantis super PAC resigned. The group has been consumed by infighting. A national consensus on abortion remains elusive because Republicans are trying to keep the issue away from voters, Kate Zernike writes. International In North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times A looming election is sharpening tensions in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where decades of conflict and humanitarian crisis have killed and displaced millions. At least 61 people, including women and children, drowned in the shipwreck of a migrant boat near Libya. A Vatican court sentenced a once-powerful cardinal to five and a half years in prison for financial crimes. Chileans vote today on a new constitution that could pull the country to the right. Putin has turned the exit of major Western companies from Russia into a financial windfall for the state and its elites. Other Big Stories Because of a powerful geomagnetic storm, the northern lights may be visible further south in the U.S. this weekend, including in New York and Washington. A Memphis elementary school said it couldn't bar an after-school club sponsored by The Satanic Temple from renting a space in its building. Each year, The Times asks teenagers to send us their college application essays about work, money or social class. Here are four, from California to Cambodia. FROM OPINION "The Crown" is a lesson in how the British monarchy exercises power through social influence, Arianne Chernock writes. In forcing a pregnant woman to cross state lines for an abortion, the United States has followed Ireland's long history of punishing women, Maureen Dowd writes. Here is a column by Ross Douthat on U.F.O.s. The Sunday question: Should Biden compromise with Republicans on immigration to win Ukraine aid? "U.S. support for Ukraine must be attentive to the perspectives and interests of the Global South," which is already critical of Biden's priorities, Antonio De Loera-Brust writes for The Washington Post. But the border crisis hurts Biden's re-election chances, and a compromise with Republicans would present "an opportunity to show they can work in good faith on a major issue that the public badly wants addressed," The Chicago Tribune's editorial board writes. The Holiday Sale on Cooking ends soon. Subscribe today. Readers of The Morning can save 50% on a Cooking subscription for the first year. Search by ingredient or explore editors' collections to easily find the right recipes. MORNING READS At a workshop in Charlotte, N.C. Jesse Barber for The New York Times Lessons in anatomy: Fitness professionals like yoga instructors are taking cadaver workshops to better understand the body. Vows: They celebrated their marriage at one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Lives Lived: Dr. Michael Stone sought to define evil, and devised a 22-category scale to differentiate killers' motives. He died at 90. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT TALK | FROM THE TIMES MAGAZINE Ro Khanna T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times By David Marchese I recently spoke with congressman Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, about how his party might better connect with voters on the economy. When you talk about manufacturing and economic concerns, do those ideas resonate for voters who feel culturally alienated from the Democratic Party? Joe Biden talks about those things, and if you look at polling, it doesn't seem like voters give him credit. Where is the disconnect? One, we have to start by acknowledging people's anger, a sense that the system is not working for them. Don't try to tell them that they should think that we're in a great place. The second thing is: Let's ask people in these communities what they want. If you go to Warren, Ohio, they're not saying, "We want semiconductor factories." They're open to it, but they want steel. And your feeling is that Biden is not doing that? I think he could do more. Every person in D.C. loves Lyndon Johnson's record, right? But every street in this country is named after John F. Kennedy, because Kennedy captured the public imagination. What we have to do as Democrats is not just think legislatively, but think, How do we capture the public imagination? I was reading your first book [2012's "Entrepreneurial Nation"] and saw a blurb from Elon Musk. What do you make of his political turn? As an entrepreneur and innovator, he is unparalleled in genius. I wish he realized that there has to be a more inclusive benefit to innovation. He can be schizophrenic, as a lot of entrepreneurs are. I had an hourlong conversation with him, with Mike Gallagher, chairman of the China committee, on A.I., and he was thoughtful. Then you see his tweet that's like a seventh grader. It's a lot that you can't defend. Read more of the interview here. More from the magazine The anime "Sailor Moon" is about friendship, yes, but also liberation that does not match the world's expectations of femininity. Tamar Shamir and Mohamed Abu Jafar had worked for years ​as peace activists, bringing Jews and Palestinians together. Oct. 7 changed everything. Read the full issue. BOOKS David Mamet Pam Susemiehl Put that coffee down: In ​David Mamet's new memoir, the filmmaker and playwright shares his opinions on Hollywood past and present. Our editors' picks: "The Mystery Guest" by Nita Prose, a murder mystery featuring the neurodivergent hotel housekeeper Molly Gray, plus six other books. Times best sellers: "Oath and Honor" by Liz Cheney, the former congresswoman from Wyoming, enters the hardcover nonfiction best-seller list at No. 1. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Spend 36 hours in Joshua Tree. Gift a kid the right Lego set. Play a different kind of card game. THE WEEK AHEAD What to Watch For Serbia holds parliamentary elections today. Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy publishing tycoon, goes on trial tomorrow under Hong Kong's national security law. Congo holds elections on Wednesday. Argentina's next payment to the International Monetary Fund is due Thursday. What to Cook This Week James Ransom for The New York Times In this season of best-of lists, Emily Weinstein turned to The Times's most popular recipes of the year for this week's Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter. Her picks include ginger chicken with sesame peanut sauce, rosemary white beans with frizzled onions and Eric Kim's gochujang buttered noodles. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangrams were clenching and leeching. Can you put eight historical events — covering the Mona Lisa, the coffee trade and the protection of free speech — in chronological order? Take this week's Flashback quiz. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. 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