I selected an English word and an accepted Wordle guess, so why is the bot telling me it’s probably not a solution?
There are almost 15,000 five-letter words in the Wordle dictionary. Some of these — SYBBE, YCOND, IMMEW — are rather obscure. Others could be considered obscene. Still others are just in bad taste.
For its suggestions to readers as part of its analysis, WordleBot considers only roughly 4,500 relatively common words. This, of course, is a judgment call, and many words are open to interpretation. As a guideline, we’ve aimed to include as many words as possible that we think a normal Times reader might have encountered before. It sounds straightforward, but words like ADOBO, BRONC, ALEPH, PISTE, ASPER and DUOMO might seem common to some readers and utterly foreign to others. (And, important note: Neither the bot nor its minders have a say in any word that appears as a Wordle solution.)
We then assign each of roughly 3,150 words a probability of being a solution, based in part on word frequency in New York Times archives dating to 2000 and on what the bot has observed about the words that have been solutions so far.
Wordle solutions don’t repeat. Does the bot take that into account?
No, it does not. And yes, this is a disadvantage for the bot against any people who keep track of which words have already appeared as Wordle solutions.