Want to Win at Wordle? Ask a Linguist!

If you’ve played WORDLE, you know how quickly this online game becomes addictive. Although only one puzzle is released each day (for now), if you haven’t yet been sucked into this new online obsession, you might not want to start.

Here’s how it works: each WORDLE puzzle gives you six chances to guess a five-letter English word (there may be versions of this game for other languages that are different). There are no hints as to what the word might be - although, a whole cottage industry has sprung up of strategies, hints, and even the answers. Each five-letter combination you enter must be a real word, and the first word you play is very important. Some players have a favorite “go-to” first word. Others select from a handful of favorites.

David Sidhu, a postdoctoral scholar at University College London who studies language, recently analyzed a list of 60,000 English words with WORDLE in mind.  Sidhu looked specifically at the five-letter words in this ist that might be considered well-known. He then determined the frequency of the letters in this subset of words. Not surprisingly, he found that "E" was the most frequently used letter. The top six most frequent letters also included "A, R, O, I, and S".

If you had to write five-letter words using only letters in this list (a word can contain more than one occurrence of each letter), how many words could you create? 

ARISE … AROSE … RAISE …

Sidhu went on to analyze the most productive order for each letter in the first word. I won't spoil the ending for you, but I will tell you that it wasn't one of the three words I’ve listed above.

So what does this have to do with SIL LEAD?

When our literacy experts prepare to develop early grade reading materials around the world, one of the first things they do is not unlike what this scholar of language did. Whenever possible, we gather text (especially narrative text) that is suitable for early grade readers. We then review that text to ensure that it has been written consistently, perhaps removing words that for various reasons may not be appropriate.

The cleaned-up text is then fed into a program like Primer Pro or PrimerPrep for analysis. The software analyzes the "frequency" and "productivity" of each letter in the language's alphabet based on the body, or corpus, of text it was supplied. In some languages, combinations of letters may represent a single sound. These combinations are referred to as "digraphs" or "multigraphs," and are treated in the analysis as if they were single letters. So, for example, in Cebuano, a language of the Philippines, the digraph “NG” is considered a separate “grapheme” from the graphemes “N” and “G”.

The result of the analysis is not only a frequency count and order (Which graphemes/letters are the most frequent?), but also a suggested productivity order (Which graphemes should be taught first, so that children can most quickly read and write short sentences?)

Our analysis of some early grade reading materials in Cebuano revealed that in that language, the six most-frequently used graphemes are “A, I, N, O, S, and G”. However, the six most productive graphemes are “A, NG, S, I, N, Y, and G”. 

The frequency and productivity rankings of all the Cebuano graphemes were then considered by literacy specialists, along with other factors such as: Can the words that can be created using these graphemes be easily illustrated? Are they words that younger children will understand? Are they appropriate for younger children? 

These literacy experts work with teachers and local language experts to determine the best sequence in which graphemes should be introduced, and how many graphemes should be introduced in each stage or lesson.By carefully determining the sequence and staging of grapheme introduction, our literacy experts can then set up the Decodable Reader Tool in SIL’s award-winning Bloom software so that writers of new decodable reading materials can have a guide for word choice as they write their stories or informational text. Text is considered “decodable” if it can be read using only the letters that the children have already been taught. So the Decodable Reader Tool helps ensure that all text is either decodable, or is a “sight word” that children have been taught to recognize. These well-planned and well-crafted decodable readers help children to more quickly learn to read and write their language.

So the next time you play WORDLE, think of all the young children around the world who are learning to read and write. And think of the literacy experts who—like you—have to determine which letters should be used first. Not to win a game, but to help a child win at reading and writing! 

By picking the right letters, we can help a child SOARE!