Bill Gates is addicted to Wordle, and now wants to share his winning strategy with you (2024)

You aren't alone. Billionaire Bill Gates revealed that he is addicted to the world of Wordle for over eight months.

Although Wordle showed up late last year, he didn't get involved until February and March this year.

Soon after he wakes up, the first thing he does is solve the word puzzle. Once that is out of the way, he plays other variations to the game - Quordle (where you guess four words) and Octordle (one puzzle with eight words). Once he has managed to clear the puzzles to his heart's content, checks his email to see how he has performed in comparison to his friends and family who share his obsession.

Boasting about how quickly he solves the game, the philanthropist shared that it usually takes him four guesses (sometimes five) to guess the final word. He once got a 10 when he was solving Octordle in practice mode, but a modest Gates said he has never done that well during the daily competition. "The nice thing about the daily competition is that it lets you play only once every 24 hours — in the practice mode, you can play for as long as you want, which makes it super-easy to waste time. I’m the kind of person who will play an addictive game over and over if I give myself the chance," he shared in his blog.

Gates went on to share his strategy in detail on his official blog - GatesNotes. "If you’ve played Wordle, you know how important your first guess is," his tweet read.

Titled 'I can’t stop playing Wordle!', the blog revealed that the billionaire's strategy includes specific rules about vowels & consonants to crack the game faster.

The note was accompanied by a fun video of Gates solving the puzzle using his strategy. He revealed that he has been glued to the word game every day since February.

In the 52-second-long video, after two attempts with words like 'Audio' and 'Print', Gates cracked the Wordle of the day - 'Night'.

Gates broke down his method in the video - first guess just also has a word that has three vowels. He said he likes to start his game with words like 'Audio' or 'Ounce' or 'Adieu' - which contains a lot of vowels. "It’s easy to get fooled by words that start with a vowel. I have to remind myself, 'That vowel could be at the start or the end of the word.' When I have two vowels, I like to try them in the second and fourth positions, like in CAGED," he shared.

Once the player has more clarity on the vowels, they can move on to the consonants. Gates calls it the 'chain of logic' just like doing a Sudoku. He also said that it is important to know which consonants go next to each other.

"I like to look for C and H, for example, or S and L. Then the consonants that are almost never paired with others — like Q, V, X, and Z — really jump out," he added.

Sometimes the answers will be pretty obscure words you never use in real life. Gates credits his love for reading English literature that has made him aware of obscure words like 'Duchy' - which the Cambridge Dictionary describes as "the area of land owned or ruled by a duke or duch*ess.

In the video, he could be heard saying, "Because I read a lot of English literature, I usually have an advantage of knowing obscure words." His blog read, "I remember one that was SMITE, a word I only know because I read the Bible... Then there’s tricky answers you just have to watch out for, like words where there’s no A, E, I, O, or U. That one threw me until I realized it had to have a Y — the answer was TRYST."

The 66-year-old also shared the frustration of having all four words in place, but guessing the first word can be challenging as there are many possibilities in the English language. Also, the word can have double letters too.

"One time, I had the last four letters of a word: A-S-T-Y. I just needed the first letter, but I was down to my final guess. Thinking of obscure words, I tried PASTY. But I’d forgotten one of the cardinal rules of Wordle: Letters can be used more than once. The answer was TASTY. I lost, thanks to that lousy double T. Lesson learned. The worst thing is when you have four of the five letters—IGHT for instance—and the answer could be LIGHT, TIGHT, FIGHT, SIGHT, RIGHT, and so on. It’s just a matter of luck whether you get the correct word before you run out of guesses. It’s especially frustrating when you’re doing Quordle or Octordle because all you’re doing is just eliminating one letter with each guess. You’re not adding any new information for the other words," he shared.

While he loves the fact that Wordle helps people stay connected, Gates can't discuss it until his friends have played the game of the day.

"Unlike some time sinks, Wordle and the other puzzles are a great way to stay connected with people, because they’re the same for everyone. Every day you can ask your fellow Wordle fans, 'Are you ready to discuss it? If you haven’t done it, I’m not going to say a thing, because I could spoil it just by telling you one word was especially easy or hard.' And by seeing who sends out their scores first, we know who got up earlier and who maybe stayed up too late the night before," his note read.

As much as he loves Wordle, Quordle and Octordle, Gates has spent the most amount of time thinking on Nerdle, another version of the game. Sharing more details about the game, he said, "Instead of a word, you’re trying to solve an equation, and instead of letters, you’re guessing digits (1 through 9) and operators (+, -, x, and /). You get six chances to put them in the right order by thinking through all the possible cases. As a math-oriented person, I’m probably better at Nerdle than the word-related versions, though I don’t have as many friends and family members who like to do it."

Wordle's creator Josh Wardle made it to TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people of 2022. The puzzles are also enjoyed by US Vice President Kamala Harris, host Jimmy Fallon and musician Questlove.

The game is no longer limited to English. The website offers Wordles in 64 languages, and some of them even include made-up ones from 'Star Trek' and 'Lord of the Rings'. "I consider myself a nerd, but anyone who can solve a Wordle in Klingon or Elvish is on a whole other level," Gates wrote.

What's your Wordle strategy?