Over a small sample size it's impossible to say, but if you maintain those numbers after many games then yes, you are better. And there are a lot of opportunities for skill or strategy.
For example the choice of your first word matters a lot, should you plane something like ADIEU to get most of the vowels, or should you plane something like CRANE that has a lot of the popular consonants?
And then the biggest mistake I see people make is getting a lot of the letters in the right spot early and then just leaving them there on subsequent guesses. Instead you should be thinking about what types of words can be made with the letters you know about and then what types of whole new words that don't contain any of the letters that you know are correct will give you the most information about the letters you don't know... ideally your first few guesses should contain none of the same letters in order to to maximize the information you gain from each guess.
> And then the biggest mistake I see people make is getting a lot of the letters in the right spot early and then just leaving them there on subsequent guesses.
I just heard about this game for the first time from this thread, went to play it, and realised this on row #3 after initially wasting row #2. It made me want to go off and write an algorithm (I actually returned to the thread to see if anyone had written anything along those lines).
But I just realised this won't do, because your score depends not only on the last row but on the intervening ones too, so there's a perverse incentive to repeat the successful letters. That works nicely for non-programmers, but it made me think I'd prefer a purer game where the only 'cost function' is based on the correctness of your final guess. Or at least, that game would be quite fascinating to try and write an optimal algorithm for.
Some might say the biggest mistake is not playing on hard mode ;)
> Hard Mode
> Any revealed hints must be used in subsequent guesses
I prefer hardmode as it prevents the sort of elimination strategies, and it feels more like a strategic game. However it does come back to bite you if you get 4 letters early on for a combination that has a lot of possible answers.
>And then the biggest mistake I see people make is getting a lot of the letters in the right spot early and then just leaving them there on subsequent guesses
For example the choice of your first word matters a lot, should you plane something like ADIEU to get most of the vowels, or should you plane something like CRANE that has a lot of the popular consonants?
And then the biggest mistake I see people make is getting a lot of the letters in the right spot early and then just leaving them there on subsequent guesses. Instead you should be thinking about what types of words can be made with the letters you know about and then what types of whole new words that don't contain any of the letters that you know are correct will give you the most information about the letters you don't know... ideally your first few guesses should contain none of the same letters in order to to maximize the information you gain from each guess.