Vowels-wise, the majority of people tends to perceive Wordle puzzles as numerical. That is, if you manage to find two of them in your first try, and then move to the third one, you are supposed to do it. Although it might seem sensible to some extent, it misses the point and pays little attention to something that is actually much more important - vowel positions rather than their number.

Word positions in English words are predictable enough. Once you understand the pattern, you do not have to guess anything and just enjoy the game.

The basic distribution

Most five-letter English words contain either one or two vowels in them. Words with three vowels are rare, and words without vowels are uncommon as well – you can explain them only with a few exceptions of Y.

And this knowledge gives you the clue by itself. Once you have two vowels in your first two tries, the probability of finding another one becomes low enough for you to move to non-vowels in your next try.

And then comes the interesting part

Where are these vowels positioned, actually?

Two and four positions are favorite spots of vowels in English words, but five position is the most valuable one for you to use in Wordle.

The silent E rule

Once you have an E somewhere in one to four positions, and it is grey, it means that you should check the position five. There are so many English words with silent E at the end that this becomes the most valuable positional rule.

And this rule is true the other way round as well. Once you have an E in the position five in your opener, you have greatly reduced your dictionary already.

Y is considered a vowel when necessary

This simple fact is often overlooked by people. Words like HAPPY, DIRTY, MUDDY, CRYPT and GLYPH contain Y as a vowel.

Simple as it gets. Y at the end of the five-letter word is a vowel 99% of the time, and Y in the middle of the word is the vowel too, especially when there are no other vowels in the word. Hence, once you tried A, E, I, O and U and failed, you should look for Y.

Vowels' clusters

Adjacency of vowels is ruled by their own rules. The most common vowel pairs are OU, EA, AI, OO, EE and IE, and they are quite common in positions two and three.

Hence, once you have found two vowels and they are adjacent, you are dealing with one of these. If vowels are not adjacent, your word is probably consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant and you need to find three consonants now.

What it means for your guessing process

As you can see from this list, a green vowel gives you much more information than it seems.

• A green vowel in the second position lets you know that your word will feature a consonant-vowel structure and you need to look for a letter like B, C, D, F, H, L, M, P, R, S, T and W.
• A green E in the fifth position lets you know that your word will feature a silent E ending, and the letter that follows it is probably a consonant like L, N, R, S or T.
• A green vowel in the fourth position lets you know that your word features a consonant cluster, and you need to test a pair like BR, CR, ST, SL, PL and TR.

Developing the skill

Obviously, you do not need to memorize the table, because it will be useless. The value of this method is in developing the recognition skills, and recognition skills come with practice.

You can play unlimited games at wordleunlimited.dev to develop it, because you will see these patterns often enough to make them natural for you rather than theoretical. Lengthening the word to six and seven letters is also informative, because more letters mean more vowels.

After several hundred games, you stop counting vowels and start recognizing patterns, and that is what it is all about.