A SMALL GUIDE TO BETTER DEDUCTION

Wordle in 1 strategy.

Solve the small certainties first. The useful question is which positions and letter counts are forced by the row, then which common word satisfies all of them at once.

1. Anchor the greens

Write the green letters into a five-position outline. Treat those positions as fixed. Count how many spaces remain before trying to move yellow letters; a yellow letter cannot displace a green anchor.

2. Turn yellows into position choices

A yellow letter must be present but cannot stay in its displayed position. List only open positions for it. If a single open position remains, place it there. With several yellow copies, reserve enough distinct positions for all of them.

3. Count before eliminating

Green and yellow copies provide a minimum letter count. A gray copy of the same letter makes that count exact. For ALLEY against APPLE, the colored L requires one L and the extra gray L rules out a second. Banning L would erase the actual answer.

4. Test the complete row

A plausible word can still fail one position or one repeated-letter count. Re-score the original clue against your proposed answer, green first and yellow second. All five colors must match, not just the green ones.

5. Use help deliberately

Start with the clue-only logic nudge when you need a fresh angle. A letter reveal adds information, so it is recorded as assistance. After the round, compare the elimination counts to understand which constraints did the work. Two stages can leave the same count; that is a valid result.

How our five levels are arranged

Warm-ups usually have three green anchors. The swap level has two greens and several yellows. The middle level introduces hidden or repeated letters. Hard deduction uses one green anchor; the final level has no greens. This is our heuristic ordering, not a measured human difficulty score or NYT editorial grading.

If an external puzzle has no or several Solver candidates, check the colors and selected dictionary. A missing word in our historical list is a dictionary boundary, not proof that the original puzzle is broken.

Independent guide. Examples use the disclosed historical dictionary. Sources and method