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《纽约时报》（nytimes.com）推出的一款流行在线文字游戏。目前全球约有200万英语版玩家。玩家需在六次尝试内猜出每日单词（目标词），每次猜测后，系统会根据猜测字母的正确性与位置提供彩色编码反馈。无论是成功解谜还是六次尝试失败后，软件均可通过信息论评估玩家的运气与技巧，并展示所有玩家随机样本中第一、第二……第六次猜测的数据。近期，笔者发现这些数据以易于复制粘贴至电子表格的格式呈现。通过整理2023年5月至8月Wordle玩家的首次猜测数据，本文推断出关于Wordle玩家的一些有趣信息：A) 每日约0.2%-0.5%的玩家在首次尝试中解谜成功。由于从2315个可能目标词中随机猜中的概率仅为0.043%，这意味着每天有4000-10000名玩家通过场外获取目标词的方式作弊！B) 至少三分之一的玩家拥有固定起始词，或轮换使用多个起始词。尽管玩家应知晓目标词永不重复，但多数人在起始词曾作为目标词出现后仍对其保持忠诚。C) 2023年8月15日，约30000名玩家突然改变起始词，推测受填字游戏线索影响！Wordle玩家同样具有可引导性。本研究超越社交媒体发帖、问卷调查与谷歌趋势分析，为Wordle作弊行为提供了坚实的定量证据。