When it comes to Wordle, do people in your area C-H-E-A-T?
According to a new study, cheating on the viral puzzle has increased significantly in recent weeks, with some states' residents resorting to shortcuts more than other.
The New York Post reports that since the daily puzzle, in which users get six chances to guess a five letter word, was acquired by The New York Times, cheating has increased 196% on the game.
The data, which was put together by Wordfinderx, was found by analyzing “Google Trends data over the past three months” to see how often players looked up answers online.
Per the study, New Hampshire has cheated on the game the most, with Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington D.C., and Massachusetts rounding out the top five.
The most popular time to look up the answer was between 7 and 8 a.m., and the words that seemingly stumped the highest number of players were "swill" and "aroma".
Related
According to a linguist, there is a way to optimize your performance for the puzzle.
Dr. Grant Berry, an assistant professor at Villanova University, says if you use the same-word-every-day strategy, you likely won’t get it on the first try, but it is a successful method that Berry said will increase the likelihood that you’ll come up with the word within fewer guesses.
“I personally start with the same word every time and try to be strategic about each guess that I use, to use the information that I get from previous guesses to help me narrow down what the word might be,” he said.
Given that these are five-letter words, odds are there’s either going to be a sequence of vowels or a cluster of consonants.
According to Berry, the most common types of consonant clusters, known as resonant consonants, are R, L and H, which are more likely to be the second or fourth letter of the five.
“The idea is that things can become more vowel-like as you move toward the center of a syllable and less vowel-like as you move away from it,” he explained. “Using that, you can usually get it between two and four [guesses].”
LISTEN on the Audacy App
Sign up and follow Audacy
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram