Bill Gates' Wordle Strategy Involves Very Specific Rules for Vowel, Consonants
In a new blog post, the Microsoft co-founder says he can't stop playing the viral word game.
Gates wrote that he usually solves the Wordle in four tries.
Bill Gates can't get enough of Wordle. The Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist took a break from the online puzzle game to write about his Wordle "obsession" and what kinds of words he starts the game with in a blog post published Tuesday.
"If you've played Wordle, you know how important it is to make your first guess strategically," Gates wrote in the post, titled "I can't stop playing Wordle!"
Gates has kicked days off with a game of Wordle for several months, and that's not all. After attempting the Wordle of the day, he moves on to spinoffs like Quordle and Octordle, according to the post. Once he's puzzle-solved to his heart's content, he checks email "to see how I stacked up against the friends and family who share my obsession."
"Unlike some time sinks, Wordle and the other puzzles are a great way to stay connected with people, because they're the same for everyone," Gates wrote. "Every day you can ask your fellow Wordle fans, 'Are you ready to discuss it?' ... And by seeing who sends out their scores first, we know who got up earlier and who maybe stayed up too late the night before."
Wordle tasks players with guessing a five-letter word in six tries or less. When a Wordler offers up a word, the letters show up in different colors that designate if they're in the right place in the word or not. With Quordle, a player guesses four words; with Octordle, it's eight words.
So how does Gates approach a game of Wordle? According to the blog post, he likes "to start with a word that contains lots of vowels, like AUDIO or OUNCE. ADIEU is a good one too." (Want more starting words? Here are some of CNET's favorites).
Next, he wrote, "it helps to think about which consonants (consonants = not a vowel) can go next to each other," like C and H, or S and L.
"Then the consonants that are almost never paired with others-like Q, V, X, and Z-really jump out," Gates wrote.
Gates says he has to remind himself that vowels can be at the start or end of words.
He wrote that he usually solves the Wordle in the span of "four guesses, sometimes five." But he did offer a time when the puzzle bested him.
"One time, I had the last four letters of a word: A-S-T-Y. I just needed the first letter, but I was down to my final guess," Gates wrote. "Thinking of obscure words, I tried PASTY. But I'd forgotten one of the cardinal rules of Wordle: Letters can be used more than once. The answer was TASTY. I lost, thanks to that lousy double T. Lesson learned."