4 ms·

1. Wordle's word list is going to be a lot more curated than TFA's word list because people want to guess words they use or have heard of, not "aahed". 2. Only

1. Wordle's word list is going to be a lot more curated than TFA's word list because people want to guess words they use or have heard of, not "aahed". 2. Only a tiny group of people care to "card count" Wordle to rule out words that have already been played because they think that sort of min/maxing is fun. Most people don't even think about that, so whether Wordle reuses words every few years is trivial to them.

deanputney 9mo ago
I will say that having used the same starter word the whole time that has not come up yet, it's a little disappointing that it may now take even longer to appear.
- SecretDreams 9mo ago
  You may want to swap out aahed if that's what you're rocking.
- xnorswap 9mo ago
  Have you checked it didn't come up before you started?
- kimos 9mo ago
  My favourite starter word has come and gone. So I’m in the opposite situation where I feel relieved to be able to go back to using it.
pseudosavant 9mo ago
The Wordle list is available here (in addition to many other places): https://github.com/pseudosavant/ps-web-tools/blob/main/wordle-solver/valid-words.csv https://github.com/pseudosavant/ps-web-tools/blob/main/wordl...
- venusenvy47 9mo ago
  Has anyone confirmed if they still use only this original list? I would think the NY Times could change the word list however they choose.
  - Rebelgecko 9mo ago
    They changed some words pretty much right after the acquisition. There was some controversy when they started doing "themed" words (like Christmas stuff in December) vs more "random" words. Some words were also removed for having negative vibes/political liability
    - julianz 9mo ago
      They removed WENCH from the list of upcoming solutions fairly quickly, but forgot to add it back to the list of available words so you couldn't use it as a guess for a little while. It made it back to the list eventually.
  - pseudosavant 9mo ago
    I believe these lists are more like what is described in the blog post. Diction of words, filtered to 5 letter words, no plurals, etc. It most likely has 99%+ of the words, but maybe some they don't actually use in Wordle.
tzs 9mo ago
> Wordle's word list is going to be a lot more curated than TFA's word list because people want to guess words they use or have heard of, not "aahed" The Times sure doesn't think that about the people who do Letter Boxed. One LB had "polymethylmethacrylate" in its dictionary. I've saved the daily dictionaries from 2024-03-30 and that's the longest word out of the 93 393 total distinct words in the 674 dictionaries I've saved. They average 1199.47 words per dictionary. They have some truly ridiculous words, such as "troughgeng". WTF is a troughgeng? Googling that gives a couple of pages in Chinese (or a similar looking language) and a Scottish dictionary entry for "Throu" which in one of the examples of "throu" as an adverb lists a bunch of phrases is it used in, including: > (8) througang, throw-, throoging, trough-geng, -geong (Sh., Ork.), (i) a going over or through; a passage (I.Sc. 1972); specif. (ii) a narration, a recital (of a story); (iii) a full rotation of crops, a shift; (iv) a thoroughfare, lane, passageway, corridor open at either end (Sc. 1808 Jam.; Sh. 1908 Jak. (1928); Rxb. 1923 Watson W.-B.; Ork., w.Lth., wm.Sc. 1972). Also attrib.; (v) = (5); (vi) energy, drive (Bnff. 1866 Gregor D. Bnff. 192);
thaumasiotes 9mo ago
> people want to guess words they use or have heard of, not "aahed" That isn't a correct diagnosis; people have heard of aahed. You'll find it naturally in the expression "[someone] oohed and aahed". People don't want aahed, and their instinct that it shouldn't count is reasonable, but unfamiliarity isn't the problem with it.
- zarzavat 9mo ago
  Ooh and aah aren't words, they're sounds (onomatopoeia). A sound is just a sequence of letters used for their phonological values. You can spell the sound "ah" however you like: ah, ahh, aah, aahh, there's no wrong way to spell it. If you write "the washing machine tringged when it finished", 'tring' is not a word, even though it's following the rules of English morphology, you could have written any sequence of letters that most faithfully reproduces the sound of the washing machine. You could have written katrigged or puh-tringged.
  - thaumasiotes 9mo ago
    That is false; the fact that you can conjugate aah (or tring) into the past tense is sufficient to prove it's a word.
  - paulcole 9mo ago
    Ooh and aah most certainly are words. Is meow not a word? Can I spell it miough and sit smugly correct?
  - housecarpenter 9mo ago
    It's true that onomatopoeia isn't always a word, but in the particular case of "aah", I think that particular choice of letters is conventionalized enough that it is a word.
  - seanhunter 9mo ago
    The oxford english dictionary disagrees with you. https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=ooh https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=ooh "Ooh" is most certainly a word. As is both "Ah" and "Aah" https://www.oed.com/dictionary/ah_int?tab=factsheet#8068455 https://www.oed.com/dictionary/ah_int?tab=factsheet#8068455 https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=aah https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=aah

deanputney 9mo ago

I will say that having used the same starter word the whole time that has not come up yet, it's a little disappointing that it may now take even longer to appear.

SecretDreams 9mo ago
You may want to swap out aahed if that's what you're rocking.
xnorswap 9mo ago
Have you checked it didn't come up before you started?
kimos 9mo ago
My favourite starter word has come and gone. So I’m in the opposite situation where I feel relieved to be able to go back to using it.

pseudosavant 9mo ago

The Wordle list is available here (in addition to many other places): https://github.com/pseudosavant/ps-web-tools/blob/main/wordle-solver/valid-words.csv https://github.com/pseudosavant/ps-web-tools/blob/main/wordl...

venusenvy47 9mo ago
Has anyone confirmed if they still use only this original list? I would think the NY Times could change the word list however they choose.
- Rebelgecko 9mo ago
  They changed some words pretty much right after the acquisition. There was some controversy when they started doing "themed" words (like Christmas stuff in December) vs more "random" words. Some words were also removed for having negative vibes/political liability
  - julianz 9mo ago
    They removed WENCH from the list of upcoming solutions fairly quickly, but forgot to add it back to the list of available words so you couldn't use it as a guess for a little while. It made it back to the list eventually.
- pseudosavant 9mo ago
  I believe these lists are more like what is described in the blog post. Diction of words, filtered to 5 letter words, no plurals, etc. It most likely has 99%+ of the words, but maybe some they don't actually use in Wordle.

tzs 9mo ago

> Wordle's word list is going to be a lot more curated than TFA's word list because people want to guess words they use or have heard of, not "aahed" The Times sure doesn't think that about the people who do Letter Boxed. One LB had "polymethylmethacrylate" in its dictionary. I've saved the daily dictionaries from 2024-03-30 and that's the longest word out of the 93 393 total distinct words in the 674 dictionaries I've saved. They average 1199.47 words per dictionary. They have some truly ridiculous words, such as "troughgeng". WTF is a troughgeng? Googling that gives a couple of pages in Chinese (or a similar looking language) and a Scottish dictionary entry for "Throu" which in one of the examples of "throu" as an adverb lists a bunch of phrases is it used in, including: > (8) througang, throw-, throoging, trough-geng, -geong (Sh., Ork.), (i) a going over or through; a passage (I.Sc. 1972); specif. (ii) a narration, a recital (of a story); (iii) a full rotation of crops, a shift; (iv) a thoroughfare, lane, passageway, corridor open at either end (Sc. 1808 Jam.; Sh. 1908 Jak. (1928); Rxb. 1923 Watson W.-B.; Ork., w.Lth., wm.Sc. 1972). Also attrib.; (v) = (5); (vi) energy, drive (Bnff. 1866 Gregor D. Bnff. 192);

thaumasiotes 9mo ago

> people want to guess words they use or have heard of, not "aahed" That isn't a correct diagnosis; people have heard of aahed. You'll find it naturally in the expression "[someone] oohed and aahed". People don't want aahed, and their instinct that it shouldn't count is reasonable, but unfamiliarity isn't the problem with it.

zarzavat 9mo ago
Ooh and aah aren't words, they're sounds (onomatopoeia). A sound is just a sequence of letters used for their phonological values. You can spell the sound "ah" however you like: ah, ahh, aah, aahh, there's no wrong way to spell it. If you write "the washing machine tringged when it finished", 'tring' is not a word, even though it's following the rules of English morphology, you could have written any sequence of letters that most faithfully reproduces the sound of the washing machine. You could have written katrigged or puh-tringged.
- thaumasiotes 9mo ago
  That is false; the fact that you can conjugate aah (or tring) into the past tense is sufficient to prove it's a word.
- paulcole 9mo ago
  Ooh and aah most certainly are words. Is meow not a word? Can I spell it miough and sit smugly correct?
- housecarpenter 9mo ago
  It's true that onomatopoeia isn't always a word, but in the particular case of "aah", I think that particular choice of letters is conventionalized enough that it is a word.
- seanhunter 9mo ago
  The oxford english dictionary disagrees with you. https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=ooh https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=ooh "Ooh" is most certainly a word. As is both "Ah" and "Aah" https://www.oed.com/dictionary/ah_int?tab=factsheet#8068455 https://www.oed.com/dictionary/ah_int?tab=factsheet#8068455 https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=aah https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=aah