Wordle’s improved Wordlebot has a new featured start word
The New York Times made a few upgrades to his wordle assistant WordleBot, and that includes a new featured keyword: SLATE. Previously it advised CRANE, but now you may want to do that too slate this new one in your repertoire.
The NYT introduced WordleBot in April as a “daily companion” to help analyze your Wordle game, and with WordleBot 2.0, the team made some changes. One of the bigger changes is that the bot no longer limits its analysis to the subset of five letter words that are familiar Wordle solutions — that is, it thinks more like a typical human player would. Previously, the bot could judge you harshly for guessing a legit word that, for whatever reason, isn’t one of the possible Wordle solutions, which can feel unfair. Now the bot has its own dictionary of about 4,500 words that it thinks players can reasonably guess, and it assigns each of them the probability that it is a solution, according to the NYTs post about the updates.
As a result of the changes, the recommended start word has been changed to SLATE from CRANE in normal mode and LEAST from DEALT in hard mode. In theory, that means that SLATE or LEAST are better starters when you play by heart, rather than with a known list of possible solutions at hand. (Although if you have become attached to CRANE or DEALT, the NYT says both are still excellent openers. About a quarter of WordleBot’s users started using CRANE today, so obviously the bot has some impact on people’s play.) NYT has also added some new stats such as a rating for information gained from a particular bet.
The upgrades all sound pretty handy, but unfortunately WordleBot is still only available to paid subscribers of Times Games, News, or All Access. If you’re an active Wordle player, the new bot could be a tempting reason to sign up for one of those subscriptions. Also, it has great sneakers.
