Rephrase and rearrange the whole content into a news article. I want you to respond only in language English. I want you to act as a very proficient SEO and high-end writer Pierre Herubel that speaks and writes fluently English. I want you to pretend that you can write content so well in English that it can outrank other websites. Make sure there is zero plagiarism.: On 19 June 2021, a simple new online game called Wordle made its debut. Today, it reached puzzle #1,000 – and I’ve played every single one.I’ve played through vacations and family crises and several job changes. I’ve played through war and elections and World Cups, and through rain and shine. I played at my sister’s wedding, I played at a four-day music festival, I played when I was sick. Obsessive, much?Hang on – is it really 1,000?Technically, Wordle is 1,001 games old, not 1,000, because its first puzzle was #0. But we’ll skip over that fact, because it would have been weird to be celebrating at #999.Maybe, but Wordle is now as much a part of my daily ritual as brushing my teeth or feeding the dog, but with the added bonus that I can write about it in my Wordle today column. (I could write about feeding my dog, but it would be a lot less interesting.)So, what do you learn about the game from playing that many times, and losing only once? Here are my thoughts.More Wordle 1,000 stories1. Streaks count for more than high scoresMost of what I’ve learned from playing Wordle isn’t that useful – for instance, that I struggle with five-letter words that end in ER, or that I don’t know what BORAX is. But some of it is useful, at least when it comes to the art of streak preservation.I speak from experience, because my Wordle streak is now at 800. That’s more than two years of daily play without a single loss.That certainly isn’t because I’m a genius (not that anyone suggested I am). Rather, I seem to be the Wordle equivalent of a tardigrade, able to survive in all conditions and emerge unscathed. I escaped with a 6/6 for RIPER, for instance, the second hardest Wordle of 2023. I solved SASSY, another tough Wordle, again with a 6/6. I got lucky with PARER, arguably the hardest ever, by rolling the dice on the final guess to decide between PARER, PAYER and PAVER. (I wouldn’t recommend that as a general strategy.) And I solved the likes of WATCH and FOYER and GAWKY and CACAO and FLUFF and CAULK and TACIT and all the other Wordles that people failed on. As I said, I’m not a genius – so how did I do it? Namely, by playing it safe. It’s all about spotting the traps and not falling into them, being cautious when your instinct tells you to take a risk.For instance: -ATCH words. There are more than six of these: WATCH, PATCH, HATCH, LATCH, CATCH, BATCH and MATCH. Guessing one after the other is not smart play. You might escape with a 3/6 or 4/6 – but you might also fail. Guessing CLAMP, though, will rule out four possible answers in one go. Even if it’s not right, you’ll have only three left to choose from and your streak will be safe.Don’t be a hero. Be a survivor.2. The Wordle Archive is much missed(Image credit: Wordle Archive)I only began playing Wordle in January 2022, so how have I managed to complete all 1,001 Wordles? It’s all thanks to the now dearly departed Wordle Archive. This site sprang up as soon as the game went viral, offering the chance to replay previous Wordles exactly as they had appeared. Each could be played in date order or you could select a puzzle of your choosing, which was handy if you’d recently missed one. It was a godsend for Wordlers who didn’t start playing until early 2022, which was most people. I was one of them, and took the opportunity to play through from the very first Wordle (CIGAR, since you ask) right up to where I’d started (#198, SIEZE). I completed them as if in real time because I loved the idea of being able to boast that I’d never lost a Wordle (yes, I am that shallow). Unfortunately, along the way, I did lose one game – and it was a stinker. The answer to puzzle #78 was WOOER, and I maintain that it is the most ridiculous Wordle yet, and not just because it beat me.Seriously, WOOER? How often have you ever seen or used that word? It’s just ridiculous. Still, 1,000 out of 1,001 is a pretty good record anyway. Sadly, the New York Times closed down the Wordle Archive soon after it bought the game in March 2022. If I could request one new Wordle feature from the NYT, it would be to bring it back so that others can try all the many games they missed out on.3. A vacation can cost you your streak(Image credit: New York Times)Though I’ve reached 800 games unbeaten, my official Wordle streak is only 49 – and for that, I pin the blame squarely on the New York Times.The problem, as no end of Reddit posts confirm, is that Wordle seemingly can’t handle a change of time zone. Twice I’ve played at midnight when abroad and found the next day that my streak has reset itself. I’ve also lost it once when I was at home, and the app just failed to register that I’d played.This doesn’t really matter, because I write about Wordle every day and have screenshots of every game. I know I’ve played, even if Wordle doesn’t. But you’d imagine it would be an easy thing to fix. The ball is in your court, NYT.4. Hard mode sucks(Image credit: TechRadar / NY Times)That -ATCH trap I described in #1? In hard mode, it will almost certainly screw you over, because you have to keep playing the same pattern each time. The only way to avoid it is to plan for those eventualities and avoid getting stuck with those -ATCH letters, but that’s almost impossible given that it’s not the only trap you could fall into. For instance, there’s the -OUND trap, or the –TER trap or the -AN-Y trap. Hard mode therefore reduces those most difficult games to luck, and that’s not the way I want to play it. If you do, that’s your call – but you probably won’t beat my streak. 5. Start words really do matter(Image credit: New York Times)If you don’t use a good start word, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage right away, and that’s a fact. It’s a fact because mathematicians say so – and mathematicians are smarter than you or I.It all comes down to statistics. There are only so many ways the 26 letters of the alphabet can be organized into words, and there are only so many of those words in Wordle. Certain letters – for instance A, E, R, O, and T – are more common in Wordle than others. Some (e.g. S, C, B) are very common at the start. Still others (Y, T, R) are very common at the end. I dig into all of this more in my analysis of Wordle’s first 1,000 games.Put that all together and you can make algorithms that do complicated things I don’t entirely understand, and determine the best possible word to play on a first guess.I explain all this in my guide to the best Wordle start words, and also my reasoning behind why I stuck with STARE for the first two years that I played. But whatever you choose, the key thing is that you don’t change each day and you don’t pick something silly like OUIJA just because it has lots of vowels. Although that said…6. …but playing without one is more fun(Image credit: New York Times)Forget everything I said above! Well, not really – it’s all true. But since January I’ve been ignoring my own advice and using a random start word each day, rather than sticking with STARE as I had previously.Why? Well, mainly because I was getting a bit bored. If you use a start word for a long time, you begin to recognize the patterns that appear each day. For instance, if I drew a blank I’d know that CLOUD would give me the best second guess. If I got…
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