  Wordle is a popular, online word game offered by the New York Times
(nytimes.com). Currently there are some 2 million players of the English
version worldwide. Players have 6 attempts to guess the daily word (target
word) and after each attempt, the player receives color-coded information about
the correctness and position of each letter in the guess. After either a
successful completion of the puzzle or the final unsuccessful attempt, software
can assess the player's luck and skill using Information Theory and can display
data for the first, second, ..., sixth guesses of a random sample of all
players. Recently, I discovered that the latter data is presented in a format
that can easily be copied and pasted into a spreadsheet. I compiled data on
Wordle players' first guesses from May 2023 - August 2023 and inferred some
interesting information about Wordle players. A) Every day, about 0.2-0.5% of
players solve the puzzle in one attempt. Because the odds of guessing the one
of 2,315 possible target words at random is 0.043%, this implies that 4,000 -
10,000 players cheat by obtaining the target word outside of playing the game!
B) At least 1/3 of the players have a favorite starting word, or cycle through
several. And even though players should be aware that target words are never
repeated, most players appear to remain loyal to their starting word even after
its appearance as a target word. C) On August 15, 2023, about 30,000 players
abruptly changed their starting word, presumably based on a crossword puzzle
clue! Wordle players can be influenced! This study goes beyond social media
postings, surveys, and Google Trends to provide solid, quantitative evidence
about cheating in Wordle.
