wordle | Tips for finding “The Word”

A five-letter word to define the online minigame wordle (“ Word ” in French) ? Viral. And if it remains simple to play, various strategies can however be employed to more easily find the key of the day. A linguist gives us leads, supplemented by advice from internet users addicted to Word.

Sylvain Sarrazin
The Press

Little reminder : Word consists of guessing a five-letter term in six attempts. On each trial, the letters contained in the answer are underlined, in green if they are well placed, in yellow if they are present but in another position (the colors differ according to the versions). Only one word can be guessed per day, which creates a sort of daily ritual for millions of Internet users.

To find it, we can leave it to chance… or listen to the linguist Richard Compton, who knows the game, who points out some tips to maximize his chances of success.

“The first strategy would be to start with words containing the most common letters in French. E, a, i, s and n are the most frequent letters among the words whose forms are not inflected”, indicates this professor of linguistics at UQAM, suggesting for example to start with “sane”.

Then, if this first fishing is unsuccessful, we continue to form words by drawing from the head of the list of the most frequent letters: r, t, o, l and u. If one of the letters of the previous attempt is misplaced, one could reuse it to try to find its place – for example by playing “holes” or “turns” – or turn to another letter. By playing “moult” in the second round, we often managed to solve the puzzle quickly. Note: some players advise, for the second and third attempts, not to reuse the letters found on the first attempt, even if they are well placed, in order to reduce the range of possibilities as much as possible.

Richard Compton draws our attention to vowels: in principle, five-letter words are more likely to contain two rather than one or three; the being there, of course, much rarer. Then, when the time comes to reveal consonants, he evokes phonotactic constraints. “There are certain combinations of sounds that will be possible or impossible,” he explains, but also more frequent syllable shapes. “For example, if I have an l in second position, a vowel could precede it, but also cl, pl…” He also underlines the musicality specific to French, with syllables with harder onsets and more melodious endings (” nail “).

Studies suggest that we are more likely to spontaneously think of words beginning with consonants.

Indeed, by performing a game with the linguist, we found that our first four attempts had a consonant in mind, while the word to find was “opium”.

Some letters should give strong clues thanks to the spelling rules. “Keep in mind, for example, that very often the q is almost always followed by a u”, or that a g at the end of a word will probably be followed by a ue or e.

Beware of doubled letters: the words to find sometimes contain them, which can be a trap, because a well-placed letter gives the illusion that it cannot be reused. The OQLF’s Linguistic Troubleshooting Bank tells us that the letters l, s and n are those that are most frequently doubled in French.

Finally, as in Scrabble, a large vocabulary will also be an asset. If these tips don’t bear fruit, don’t panic: you’ll have another chance tomorrow, and yet another one the day after tomorrow…