Wordle is a popular, online word game offered by the New York Times (nytimes.com). Currently there are some 2 million players of the English version worldwide. Players have 6 attempts to guess the daily word (target word) and after each attempt, the player receives color-coded information about the correctness and position of each letter in the guess. After either a successful completion of the puzzle or the final unsuccessful attempt, software can assess the player's luck and skill using Information Theory and can display data for the first, second, ..., sixth guesses of a random sample of all players. Recently, I discovered that the latter data is presented in a format that can easily be copied and pasted into a spreadsheet. I compiled data on Wordle players' first guesses from May 2023 - August 2023 and inferred some interesting information about Wordle players. A) Every day, about 0.2-0.5% of players solve the puzzle in one attempt. Because the odds of guessing the one of 2,315 possible target words at random is 0.043%, this implies that 4,000 - 10,000 players cheat by obtaining the target word outside of playing the game! B) At least 1/3 of the players have a favorite starting word, or cycle through several. And even though players should be aware that target words are never repeated, most players appear to remain loyal to their starting word even after its appearance as a target word. C) On August 15, 2023, about 30,000 players abruptly changed their starting word, presumably based on a crossword puzzle clue! Wordle players can be influenced! This study goes beyond social media postings, surveys, and Google Trends to provide solid, quantitative evidence about cheating in Wordle.

翻译：Wordle是由《纽约时报》（nytimes.com）运营的一款热门在线文字游戏。目前全球约有200万用户玩英文版。玩家有6次机会猜测每日单词（目标词），每次猜测后，系统会通过颜色编码反馈每个字母的正确性和位置。当玩家成功解谜或六次尝试均告失败后，系统可利用信息论评估玩家的运气与技巧，并展示全体玩家中随机样本的第一至第六次猜测数据。近期我发现，这些数据以易于复制粘贴至电子表格的格式呈现。我收集了2023年5月至8月期间Wordle玩家的首次猜测数据，并推演出关于玩家的若干有趣信息：A) 每日约有0.2-0.5%的玩家一次猜中谜题。由于在2315个可能的目标词中随机猜中的概率仅为0.043%，这意味着每天有4000-10000名玩家通过游戏外获取目标词作弊！B) 至少三分之一的玩家有固定的起始词，或循环使用若干起始词。尽管玩家应知目标词从不重复，但多数人在其起始词曾作为目标词出现后仍坚持使用。C) 2023年8月15日，约3万名玩家突然改变起始词——据推测是受到当日填字游戏线索的影响！Wordle玩家并非无懈可击！本研究超越社交媒体发帖、问卷调查和谷歌趋势分析，首次为Wordle作弊行为提供了坚实的量化证据。