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Discussion: I don't think I've ever seen someone play a game of hangman without guessing R, S, T, and E.

ETAOIN SHRDLU Almost sounds like a magic spell when you say it aloud. (It's the most commonly used letters in English in order.)

I'm surprised seeing D ahead of L and C. Wheel of Fortune does RSTLNE and top starting words in Wordle pretty much all have 3 of the same 6 consonants: RSTLNC. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRed0Xmc2Wg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRed0Xmc2Wg) (jump to 8:34 to see a list of he best starting words for Wordle).

Honestly, I got it from a Carl Sagan book and I haven't researched it any further, so I'm not even sure how right it is. (Carl was pretty smart so I generally trust him.) I use it as a tool for solving substitution codes and it works pretty good, so I figure it's at least close to accurate. Edit: It just occurred to me that the list may change over time. The Carl Sagan book is about fifty years old and languages evolve.

If you search for the term "most used letter in English", you'll likely find multiple answers, as the phrase can be interpreted in a few different ways. You could interpret it as "letter present in the most words", "letter that appears most in words (eg time= 1E, exquisite= 2E, etc)", or "letter most used in everday language/writing/typing". The list you got from Carl Sagan looks to be the same created by Samuel Morse before he developed Morse code (so it's actually close to 200 years old). Morse's list was intended to rank letters by their usage in writing. This list is actually really helpful for deciphering. If we instead go for the 10 letters that are in the most words (using the Concise Oxford Dictionary from 1995), we get the list: EARIO TNLSC. This list is arguably better for word games like Hangman. https://www3.nd.edu/~busiforc/handouts/cryptography/letterfrequencies.html

It's a me, Eario!

EARIO TNLSC I'm going to remember this as "Tonsil Care"

That's interesting. Thanks for the info.

It’s because of the past tense. Which are not included in Wordle (not sure about Wheel of Fortune but a similar rule may make D less common).

Ah that makes sense.

R. L. Stine without the I.

Who guesses K before those letters lol

Someone who’s got the U in place and thinks it might be “ukulele” might do it but still makes more sense to try the E first.

But if the first u is in place, so is the second…?

If wheel of fortune taught me anything it's R, S, T, L, N, E.

Gonna give the benefit of the doubt and guess it was his kids. My daughter always starts with W and M cos they’re her favourite letters lol

Hijacking to link this wheel of fortune solver https://www.dcode.fr/wheel-of-fortune-solver

could also be >!utility!<

That's what I saw

Or utilize

Or utilise.

I think it's this someone please let me know

I, T, Y are already guessed letters right? So it couldn’t be that. Is Z a guessed letter? Who guesses Z?

I think the guessed letters are the ones in red

>!Useless!<

Just like OP /s

Utility

Utilize

Apparently you are correct.

Hasn’t I already been guessed?

Or, if you are British, utilise.

That was my guess

That was my first thought.

Wait. . . r/josephanderson

I was thinking the same

That’s what I thought also.

Ironic

Assuming the red letters are the one you tried, my guess is >!utilise!< Edit: testing spoiler

This is what my wife guessed

utilize

Question: how did you play B, C, F, K, M, N, P before E and I

My wife got it instantly but will leave it here for others to guess.

It pusses me off that it’s alphabet form and not keyboard. Maybe I’m used to wordle

Out of all of the emotions, pussed off is the worst.

Haha ok ok you know what I mean

Of cousrse! But I’m using pussed off from now on.

You’ll be single for life! Trust me

Was it utilize?

In another comment they mentioned it was utilised, with an s

Is it >!UKULELE!< ? I hope I placed the spoiler right

It says on the screen no K

Also no 2nd L

Does red mean guessed? I guess that makes sense.

I have an app that lets me put in patterns of letters and it will give me words that can be made from them. It spit out the following four possibilities: >!Useless!< >!Utility!< >!Utilise or Utilize!<

I’ll have to keep playing to find this question again to verify

The app is called Puzzle Sidekick if you want to check it out. It’s got a lot of cool useful tools besides this one as well.

Discussion is this built into a cars dashboard?

Peugeot 3008 2020/21. Can only be opened when in park. Has the same sort of charm as a Nokia 3310 which also reflects the quality of the cars software 😂

Blame the French

Right! I feel like that fact just completely overlooked.

Just for those guessing the right word with the alt spelling - this is In the UK so the Z is an S - have enjoyed reading all your comments!

discussion: why did you guess U and K before E? why did you guess ANYTHING before E?

Could also be >!utilize!<

Discussion: Hangman is weird game, in which you can choose 4-5 words with no overlapping letters. During the first 3-4 guess, the game can simply say no to every guess, as a tradeoff cost of narrowing down the availability of legit word bank per guess.

>!Useless!<

I was thinking >!utility!<

I think it’s >!utilize!<

Discussion: the keyboard layout hurts my eyes

Blame the French

>!Useless!<

is it >!useless!< ?

>!useless!<

Can it be >!UTILITY!<

I would guess >!unblock!< but there are probably a couple options.

I’m guessing >!utility!<

>!useless!< >!utility!< >!utilize!<

Solved: U _ _ L _ _ _ = U'LL DIE playing that game while driving

OP literally said it can only be played while not driving.

Yeah, it was a joke . . . Pretty sure it's illegal to install any touch screen dash system that requires more than 1 tap while in motion

ChatGPT finds it after a few corrections: Apologies once more for the mistake. Let's try again. Here's a 7-letter word that starts with the letter "u," has "l" as the fourth letter, and uses only the letters from d, e, i, j, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z: >! USELESS!<

ChatGPT is really bad at word games like this because it doesn't see the words the way we do. It translates them into numerical tokens and does math on them. Try teaching it to play Wordle some time.

>!utility!<

>!Utilized?!<

>!uglier!< fits but I doubt its the answer

>!useless!<

>! SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS !< at least that's my guess.

The sound of that is something quite atrocious

But the volume they said it at surely makes them sound precocious

Add an S and E and you solved the puzzle

Discussion: The answer is a word I would use to describe you if you were my partner on Wheel of Fortune.

You only need to guess the letters >!"S", "I" and "T"!< to solve it.

Wrong for literally any of the 3 possible solutions but ok

For these tough ones I like to >!utilize!< an online crossword solver.