Pete's Log: Christmas Wordle

Entry #2463, (Word Games and Puzzles)
(posted when I was 45 years old.)

I fear I might need to get through all the major holidays before I can end this obsession.

Just like for Thanksgiving, I tried to track a few Christmas themed words to see how popular they became as starting words. Originally I could only think of GIFTS, but then I also came up with CAROL.

What I didn't anticipate was people choosing a starting word with a double letter. So while CAROL was the 47th most popular starting word on December 25 and GIFTS rose all the way to #12, MERRY was the dark horse that made it all the way to #6.

Most popular starting Wordle words on December 25, 2023: Top 15 are ADIEU, SLATE, STARE, AUDIO, RAISE, MERRY, ARISE, CRANE, IRATE, TRAIN, GREAT, GIFTS, HEART, AISLE, HOUSE, then bolded is #47: CAROL

Since I didn't anticipate it in advance, I only have three days of data for MERRY.

Screenshot of a chart showing the popularity of Merry, Gifts, and Carol as starting Wordle words. X axis is dates in December: 20-27. Y axis is popularity rank. Merry only starts on the 25th and has values 6, 178, and 758. Gifts is 262, 210, 171, 59, 12 (on the 25th), 124 and 499. Carol is 326, 316, 266, 124, 47 (on the 25th), 311, 617