From Lab to Life: Learning from Wordle

I play a New York Times word game faithfully every morning. It is called Wordle.  You get six tries to guess a five-letter word.  When you get a letter right, it turns green.

Josh Wardle originally built the game in 2020 as a private surprise for his partner, Palak Shah, to enjoy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The name Wordle is a play on his name, Wardle.  I think many millions play it daily.

Science Daily reports on Sept. 12 on “a Wordle strategy that wins 99% of the time.”  I find that I actually use it, intuitively, most of the time.   The strategy is based on a branch of mathematics known as information theory.

And here’s the trick:  Instead of choosing the most likely word or answer – make a guess that yields the most information.  The method is based on Claude Shannon’s entropy principle  (Shannon pioneered information theory).

I think there is a life lesson here.  We live life by making wild guesses. Many are wrong.  For instance, choosing a life mate, when hormone tornados drive our thinking.

Using the Wordle idea –   Try to gather information by asking good questions.  Let’s say,  date those from whom you can best calm the hormones and figure out who you really are, what you seek in a life mate, and how you might find it, engaging in mutual questions, and learning about who you are from how others perceive you.  Use information theory as a life method – not trying to hit THE right answer, but trying to learn more and more and acquire crucial information by asking constantly penetrating questions.

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This research comes from Binghamton University:

** Talal Aladaileh, Donald Stephens, Mallak Alqaisi, Congyu Wu, Solving Wordle  using information theory,  Northeast Journal of Complex Systems,  2026.