Wordle

 

Up until now, I haven't played Wordle, as I'm usually engrossed in Words With Friends, but I finished all my games and still couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd check it out. I've been playing for ten days and so far it seems fairly straightforward - though I know I've just jinxed it by saying that. My strategy is to start with LOUSE, because that knocks out three of the vowels. If none of those come up, I go for HAIRY, which sinks the other two. Once you know the vowels and the easy endings (S, R, H and Y) then there's only really D left as a sensible possibility. The one today was tough:

LOUSE

HIARY

DRAIN

GRAIN

TRAIN

It's harsh when you hit an ending with multiple rhyming options. The other ones that are difficult are double letters. So, LOONY for example, because you don't want to blow a vowel guess by doubling it unless you're sure. 

But, on the whole, there tend to be a limited number of options for a five-letter word once you get the vowels down. 

It's a bit tough for Brits as they use the American spelling for a lot of words, dropping the U in OU words, even though it was invented by a Brit. 

It's more fun than I was expecting, but I won't be tweeting my daily score.