New features for the updated WordleBot

I selected an English word and the wordle guess is acceptable, so why does the bot tell me it’s probably not a solution?

There are approximately 15,000 five-letter words in the Wordle Dictionary. some of those – SybbeAnd YCONDAnd immew – rather vague. Others may be considered obscene. Still others are just in poor condition.

For suggestions to readers as part of its analysis, WordleBot considers only about 4,500 relatively common words. This is, of course, a judgment call, and many of the words are open to interpretation. As a guideline, we have aimed to include as many words as possible that we think the average Times reader has encountered before. Sounds obvious, but words like ADOBOAnd broncAnd one thousandAnd PISTEAnd ASPER And Domo It may sound familiar to some readers and downright strange to others. (And an important note: neither the bot nor its moderators have a say in which word appears as a Wordle solution.)

We then assigned the probability of it being a solution to each of the roughly 3,150 words, based in part on word frequency in New York Times archives dating back to 2000 and what the bot observed about which words were solutions so far.

Wordle’s solutions are not repeated. Does the bot take that into account?

no not like that. And yes, that’s a disadvantage for the bot against anyone tracing words that have already appeared as Wordle solutions.

The bot will say something like, “This is what 1,000 other readers who faced the same scenario as you have done.” What does it mean?

The “scenario” is determined by what solutions are left and what turn the player takes, rather than the specific path the player took to get there.