Is anyone here playing Quordle?

Yes. I play it every morning with my coffee and cereal. I occasionally play their new addition “Sequence”
I use the same three starter words. That means I don’t have a chance at getting a score below 4,5,6,7. but I do have a high chance of success.

Ready
Fight
Plumb
Nocks

Stern
Audio
Lymph

@LuckyGuy I’ll have to try those. Mine gets you the f, g, b, and c in addition within four tries.

@Jeruba, my strategy is to qualify a spread of letters first and then solve the easiest one and go from there.

I use these two, in Wordle and Quordle and lookalikes:

AUNTY
OSIER (a kind of willow)

That gives me all the vowels, placing Y where it’s most likely to occur, ER where it’s most likely to occur in combination, and U ready for all those damnable – U – - Y words.

For a long while I used ADIEU and STORY, which were pretty good, especially with the S in position 1. Then I went through a series of trials, and finally put my choicest letters into an anagramming program and tried out the results (DAISY ROUTE, UNITY AROSE, SAUTE IRONY) until I got the present pair, which I’ve stuck with for a long time now.

But even with a solid starter pair, I’m tackling the quartet with no finesse and no strategy. For the one-word games, I do have strategies.

@LuckyGuy and @kevbo1, good coverage from your starters. Do you use the same with Wordle? And what is your most common number of guesses?

I don’t really play Wordle—the skill/luck/payoff mix doesn’t really do it for me. Quordle is more satisfying.

My Daily Quordle win percentage is 93% and most commonly I get it in 8 guesses. Best is in 6.

The one that really sucked me in is Redactle.

Ye gods, @kevbo1, what is that? You have figure out the subject matter of a long story with nothing to go on but noun markers, prepositions, a few to-be verbs, and relationships? Do you tackle a fresh one of those every day?

Not that that page doesn’t resonate with certain moments in my editorial career.

And I’ve always said that much of my job is about relationships—setting them right, from micro to macro.

Hmm.

Oh, my goodness, @kevbo1, what a brilliant puzzle! You have well and truly got me with Redactle. Since my post a couple of hours ago, I have done nothing but chip away at that puzzle: a feast and a funeral in one.

I hope it doesn’t get yanked away at midnight.

@Jeruba,—lol yes it is quite the train wreck. There’s some strategy there too that helps, but it’s more fun to discover. You’ll get quicker at it, I’m sure.

I haven’t played it for a while. Might be that I didn’t have time or that I got too good (good enough to know that for some topics, I just won’t solve it). I will say that if you get far enough and need to give up, that you can post a run of solved words together in the Wikipedia search and it’ll bring up the right page or something that’s close.

@kevbo1, I got yesterday’s, my first try, after four hours, with a lowly 323 guesses and 60.37%. It took me too long to figure out that I should be guessing words like “he” and “which” long before trying “academy” and “field” (both of which were hits).

Also not to click go without checking for typos.

Very interesting exercise, and I’m eager to try it again, but I can’t commit thst much time on a daily basis.

How long does it usually take you?

I did think of searching Wikipedia, but I wanted to get it on my own. I saw quickly that it was a bio. At some point I tried the lucky word “Soviet,” and that got me over the hump.

…
Whew, I just solved today’s in 15 minutes, with 77 guesses and 87%, by starting with a list of common words and then guessing that “York” followed “New.” So I haven’t given my life away, but my record will never overcome that 60%.

Thank you for the new and worthy challenge. Much better for my brain than rreading movie reviews looking for something decent to watch.

15 minutes?! Wow, nice!

I didn’t get yesterday’s. Who was it?

Pavlov. Ivan Pavlov.

Long before I got it, I just guessed Ivan for the heck of it. Got a hit on that and also Sergei. Then I stopped with shots in the dark.

For decades in my professional life, I was immersed in reading and editing documents of all kinds. I became sharply aware of the rhythm, rhyme, and relationships of written English. How interesting, after all these years, to just treat those as playthings.

It turns out that there are two—??—Redactle sites and that I have no history on the primary one, so I can start clean on another day.

Is there any special gain in solving on consecutive days?

And does it shut you down at midnight if you haven’t finished solving?

I think the new puzzle came up for me at 10 a.m. Mountain or thereabouts. If you click on the links at the top, you’ll get more info

Oh my! That Redactle is a real challenge! I started to do one but did not have the patience. This morning was the first time I felt comfortable sitting in front of my laptop with a coffee and playing. I got it in 5,6,7,8.

@Jeruba I use the same three words or a small aviation in Wordle as well. Depending upon the results of my 2 starter words I might use: lymph, glyph, or nymph. I get mad at myself when I chase a word that has too many possibilities and waste a guess. If I just do three starters the game is over in a minute or so and I get a score of 4.
,

@LuckyGuy, I got it today in 4, 5, 6,7!

And I have fallen in love with Redactle. @kevbo1, you can consider yourself a matchmaker.

I tried Redactle today, but could not figure it out. I have a rough idea of what is being discussed and have a fair number of guessed words. Is there a way of giving up and getting the answer?

I finally completed a Redactle. It took 458 guesses and it came as a surprise when I was told that I guessed the mystery word. I am not sure I would want to go through this again

@LostInParadise, the only way I know to get the answer is to piece together a distinct enough phrase and then search that phrase on wikipedia.

@Jeruba, glad you’re enjoying it!

Here’s what I did.. First I looked up a list of the 100 most common words in English. The first time, I put in all of them. After that it was a selection, about half. Then I added some others, such as “many” and “although” and the numbers from 0 to 9 and one to ten.

One of the most helpful is “he.” If there are few or no hits on “he” and/or “she,” it’s not about a person. Then words like “used” and “found” and “known” can lead somewhere. Also things like if you get a bunch of hits on “world,” try “war.”

It’s harder when it’s a specific reference, a proper noun that you know or you don’t (like Pavlov and Westminster), but then the lookup trick will work. I’ve done that twice. A common thing or class of things (such as “tunnel”) comes more easily.

I look for phrases that emerge, such as ” the x of all y”, which wants to be something like “the best of all time” or “least” or “greatest” or other superlative. Many such phrases just appear. That’s how I’ve progressed with several of them.

So far I’ve solved all ten since I started.

I actually got a little bit tired of quordle a while back, now I play Octordle. But I always start off with the word stare, which has the two most common vowels and the three most common consonants. If I’m not getting any results then I try cough, followed by blind.

@Jeruba, that’s a good way to go. I’m less scientific about it, but I use many past tense verbs “was/were,” etc., I use units of government (country, state) and sometimes names of countries and continents. Numbers (spelled and written) and months. If it’s not historical, then I try natural elements such as “water,” “earth,” etc. If I think it’s cultural, I try “philosophy” and “music.”

Another good game to try is connections.

@kevbo1, did you get xenon?

@Jeruba I don’t play very often, so I didn’t do yesterday’s. I got today’s though in 103 guesses, and I got Thriller the other day pretty quickly.

Wow, @kevbo1. Today’s practically stumped me. I came in at 39%. My best so far is 87%.

I can’t say I’m scientific about it, but I’m fairly systematic. And I’m willing to tackle any topic.

@LifeQuestioner, I’ll take a look at Connections. Do you have a link?

I do! https://www.nytimes.com/games/connections

@LifeQuestioner, that one’s really hard. I got only one set of the four before running out of tries. How are you doing with it?

@kevbo1, after a very tough challenge last night, I got today’s Redactle in one guess!

P.S. Ooh, I just won today’s Connections.

@Jeruba I’m doing pretty well, but here’s what I do. Before I try to click any of the answers off, because obviously there’s some words that can go in more than one category, I read through all the words and kind of figure out where it’s going. Even so I often have trouble figuring out what the last four have in common, but at that point I usually know that they have to be right by process of elimination. I like the game though, it’s a lot of fun!

@Jeruba, that’s amazing!

edit: lol—so did I! A picture is worth a thousand guesses.