Today's Wordle Shows That We Need a Wordle Dictionary

It's time for the New York Times to provide player with a database of valid Wordle solutions. Players are struggling with today's Wordle puzzle due to how the word is made up. Today's Wordle shares its final four letters with several other words, which can potentially frustrate players and force them into a guessing game if they aren't able to eliminate other potential solutions. Be warned because this article goes into detail about potential solutions about today's Wordle.

After guessing PESTO for my second guess, I assumed that I was left with two distinct sets of words that could be the answer. The first were words that end in -ESTY, such as ZESTY or TESTY, while the other ends with -ESTS such as BESTS, TESTS, or RESTS. I eventually chose BESTS as my third guess, which eliminated the latter word group opened the door for me to get the answer correct on the fourth try.

However, my personal frustrations with today's Wordle came after I had solved the puzzle. I like to check out WordleBot, an automated Wordle solving program hosted by the New York Times, to compare solutions and see what steps I could have taken to improve my Wordle process. WordleBot informed me that my third guess BESTS was a "wasted guess" as that word couldn't be a potential solution to today's Wordle. 

Given that BESTS is a valid word in the English dictionary and hadn't been eliminated through my first two guesses, this can only mean one of two things. Either WordleBot is wrong or the word does not appear on the list of potential Wordle solutions that the game randomly chooses from when picking today's puzzle. 

We know that the New York Times has removed words for the pool of potential Wordle answers before in an attempt to make the game more accessible and less frustrating for players. However, unless the New York Times actually tells players what words it removed, those changes only have the potential to be more frustrating for players, especially in situations where they "waste" a guess on a word that's not valid for the game. 

Scrabble and other popular word games all have "official" word dictionaries that players can use as tools when playing. While part of the fun of Wordle is that it's quick and easy, there still needs to be an "official" word list of some kind that players can use as a reference tool as they work through today's puzzle.