Ramblings

Look at that! 45/45 Achievements! I finally got there today (December 4, 2024) when I bagged the final one, 1000 daily games. As far as I know I’m the first person on the planet to achieve this – please contact me or comment if you know otherwise. It hasn’t been easy, I can tell you…

Ok, that’s quite a loose definition of achievement – sitting on my arse/ass playing a time-wasting game as my life ticks by. Of course calling them “Achievements” is a trick to make you feel better about what you’re doing. I’m not knocking time-wasting, we all need downtime, and most people like to relax by doing something useless for a while. But online games are designed to be addictive, and trust me, it’s easy to spend way too much time on the sofa tied to your screen.

Wordle, Quordle and Octordle

The hugely popular word game, Wordle, has spawned many variants. While Wordle challenges you to find one five-letter word in six guesses, Quordle gives you nine guesses in which to find four words, and Octordle gives you thirteen guesses for eight words. These variants may like to think of themselves as fiendish or complicated, but in practice they can be quite easy.

Going for Glory vs Safety First

There are two basic strategies for these games. Firstly you can make all your guesses adaptive – i.e. consistent with all the information you have, and possibly the correct answer. This method – “Going for Glory” – can work well in solving Wordle in the fewest guesses, but might not work as well in Quordle or Octordle, as it can leave you short of information on subsequent words. The second strategy – where you make “impossible” guesses on your second, maybe third, perhaps even your fourth line, to gather more information about which letters are involved – “Safety First” – is more reliable in completing these latter two games in the required number of guesses.

The Four Word Sledgehammer

My default Quordle and Octordle method was to find four words which cover twenty of the most used letters in the alphabet – by leaving out six high value Scrabble tiles and juggling the rest I found BUDGE, FLOCK, MINTY and SHARP – leaving out just the rogue letters J,Q,V,W,X and Z – and played them every time.

This more or less bludgeoned the answers out – certainly a boring strategy, but brutally effective in winning. The game was often won in the time it took to type the answers – so that Octordle, in particular, became so easy that it was barely worth playing. After my four starter words, just two more wrong guesses would lose me the game, but this very rarely happened, and it was often possible to finish in twelve rows – i.e. with every guess correct after the first four.

This method is also highly effective in Quordle, but not quite so reliable. Using my strategy, both games only allow for one error after my opening four, so you might think that guessing four from nine would be easier than eight from thirteen. Not so: by the time you’ve filled in the easier Octordle lines, you have more information for the others, while Quordle gives you less opportunity to gather information.

In Quordle I found that some traps could still catch me out: one of the meanest was when I’d narrowed the last word down to ?IPER. That could still be PIPER, RIPER, VIPER or WIPER – the missing letter was either a double, or V or W which hadn’t made the cut to my top twenty. Another trap was CO?ER, which could be COVER, COWER or CORER. Ouch. I needed a lucky guess.

Octordle Rescue Game

Octordle does have a genuinely challenging variant: the Rescue Game. It starts with four random guesses already entered: you then have nine guesses in which to find the eight answers and “rescue” the game. This version takes you away from your starter-word comfort zone – the pre-loaded guesses can be infuriatingly unhelpful (who puts in four lines without trying an E or an S?) but then you have to try to gather more information, working in from the most guessable. Sometimes you have so few clues, and so many possible answers, that you have to spend a line testing new letters. And once you’ve made a single wrong guess, you’re on a tightrope – one more mistake and you’ve lost. I lose this game at least one time in three – sometimes feeling aggrieved, suspecting there was no possible winning strategy – but there is a genuine sense of “achievement” when you prevail.

List of Quordle Achievements

Ah yes, achievement. Quordle has made itself especially sticky (or addictive) by setting up these 45 different “Achievements”:

• Practice Makes Perfect: Win 1/5/10/50/100/500/1000 practice games.
• Slow and Steady: Win 1/5/10/50/100/500/1000 daily games.
• Relentless: Reach a maximum streak of 5/10/50/100/500 in practice.
• Unbreakable: Reach a maximum streak of 5/10/50/100/500 for the daily.
• Niner: Win a game in 9 turns.
• Par: Win a game in 8 turns.
• Birdie: Win a game in 7 turns.
• Eagle: Win a game in 6 turns.
• Albatross: Win a game in 5 turns.
• God Mode: Win a game in 4 turns.
• Double or Nothing: Guess a word with 2 of the same letter.
• Wooow: Guess a word with 3 of the same letter.
• One in a Million: Guess an answer correctly on turn 1.
• Spread the Word: Share a game result.
• So Close: Lose a game with 1 missed word.
• Getting the Hang of It: Lose a game with 2 missed words.
• Step It Up: Lose a game with 3 missed words.
• Are You Even Trying?: Lose a game with 4 missed words
• The More the Merrier: Play 50/100/200/300/500/1000/10000 words in practice, daily, or sequence.

They get you hooked with trivially easy ones: “Niner: Win a game in 9 turns”, “Double or Nothing: Guess a word with 2 of the same letter”. Some even reward failure: “So Close: Lose a game with 1 missed word”. Those little alerts give you a tiny shot of endorphins, and gratified by seeing your achievements rack up in this difficult world, you abase yourself in search of more: “Are You Even Trying?: Lose a game with 4 missed words”. You have to be deliberately bad to do that.

If you prefer to humiliate yourself more publicly, you can “Spread the Word: Share a game result” on social media, so that all your Friends can see how you spend your spare time. Luckily there’s a workaround: you can bag this achievement by emailing or messaging the game result to yourself. No-one else need know your little secret. Unfortunately the Achievement times out after a day, and you have to “share” all over again – Quordle wants you to broadcast your triumphs regularly.

Eventually you will have acquired all the easy ones, leaving only the super time-consuming, the long term and the near impossible. This is where any sensible person would move on with their life. I’m not in this category.

That’s how they get you hooked

These Achievements are designed to keep you addicted over the long term:

• “Practice Makes Perfect: Win 1000 practice games.” – if each game takes (say) two minutes, that’s thirty-three hours and twenty minutes of your life you won’t get back.
• “Slow and Steady: Win 1000 daily games.” – that’s two years and nine months of playing days.
• “Unbreakable: Reach a maximum streak of 500 for the daily.” – sixteen and a half months of playing – and winning – the game every single day. Whichever time zones you travel to, whatever else might be happening in your life. Better have a reliable Wi-Fi or phone signal wherever you go.
• “The More the Merrier: Play 10,000 words in practice, daily or sequence.” – at thirty seconds a word, that’s eighty-three hours and twenty minutes, for heaven’s sake.

The Tough Ones…

These are the most challenging Achievements:

• “One in a Million: Guess an answer correctly on turn 1.” – actually your odds are much better than one in a million. My best source has the Quordle list at 2,306 words in total. This gives you a 4 in 2,306 = 1 in 576.5 chance of hitting one of the right answers with your first guess. That will probably happen four or five times in the 2,500 games (10,000 words) you play on your way to The More the Merrier.
• “God Mode: Win a game in 4 turns.” on the other hand does need a huge amount of luck. If your guesses were all made randomly, without taking account of earlier answers, the chance of achieving God Mode would be (4/2306) x (3/2305) x (2/2304) x (1/2303) = 0.0000000000851% – that’s about 1 in 1.175 trillion. So if you played a game every two minutes, day and night, 365 days a year (you can have 29th February off) you would achieve God Mode on average about once every four and a half million years. But in reality, although your first guess might be random (in that it is no more or less likely to be right than any other word) your subsequent three guesses can use the information gathered from earlier lines. So if your first guess happens to be correct, and you restrict yourself to guesses which could be correct for other lines, then you have a tiny but real chance of achieving God Mode.
• “Relentless: Reach a maximum streak of 500 in practice.” – this is a brute. My four chosen start words would get me all four correct answers within nine rows about 49 times out of 50. But on the 50th, it would spring a trap like PIPER/RIPER/VIPER/WIPER (see above) and a wrong guess would end the streak.

…and how to bag them

So how was I able to collect all 45 achievements? By a combination of hard work (or time wasting, depending on your perspective), patience, the odd piece of luck, and a large helping of cheating. Quordle was launched on January 25th 2022, so anyone who claims to have won 1000 daily games before #1000 on October 20th 2024 is telling a porky. But it’s just a matter of time – any persistent and patient player can complete it eventually. And many regular players will have scored One in a Million by now, through sheer dumb luck.

What about God Mode, and those extremely long odds? Many committed Quordlers will feel their only realistic choice is to cheat. That’s what we’re reduced to, cheating to gain a spurious “Achievement”. And indeed, most people who have bagged this one have cheated. It’s not difficult – you can find out the correct words on one of the many cheat websites, or play the daily game first on a different browser or a different device, before entering them all, right first time, in triumph. Many players will also be tempted to bend the rules for the more likely (but rare) Win a game in 5 turns.

The First G-d Mode I’d heard of

I’m sure many people have, like me, cheated their way to a four. But I wondered whether anyone out there had scored a legitimate God Mode, and I posted the question here. The answer was, yes they have! I was contacted in October 2024 by Michael Himmel, who told me how he achieved a genuine G-d Mode in Practice mode on 3rd November 2022. He succeeded with a starting word AUDIO and a strategy of optimising for trying to win in four or five turns.

Of course, no matter how brilliant your strategy, you will still need a huge chunk of luck to succeed at God Mode. In this case, having AUDIT as one of the other solutions was a big help, but it was still very long odds against nailing SEDAN and FLOSS with the next two guesses.

How he did it

Michael says than in optimising for a finish in four or five he was prepared to lose individual games: he was going for glory, not playing safe – although he would still try to retrieve the game after an attempt at four or five had failed. He sent another screen shot showing a near 32% loss rate – pretty high if you’re used to the safe approach, but it confirms the consequences of going all out for a super low score. Michael also employed more unusual starter words like CURVE and MOGUL so although the hit rate for shared letters was lower, if he did get a first or second row hit there would be a smaller pool of words to choose from for the second or third guess. Michael has also scored two Albatrosses (win in five guesses). He gives more details in his comment below, and he describes how playing Quordle helped him get through a difficult part of his life.

The new first God Mode I’ve heard of

In January 2025 an anonymous poster responded to my comment that I didn’t know of anyone else who had achieved an “honest” God Mode:

I did.  worth – there – farce – barge. didn’t cheat.

This was the solution to Daily Quordle (now Classic) #129 – not on Practice mode, which appeared on 2nd June 2022. So this is now the earliest God Mode I know of.

Phil’s God Mode near misses and eight Albatrosses

Phil, also the author of one of the responses below, has also been in pursuit of God Mode, and has eight Albatrosses to his credit. He writes “I have achieved eight fives, and twice was just one letter away from a legitimate four.” Since then he has again missed out by a single letter. Phil was kind enough to let me share screenshots of his God Mode near misses.

If the word in the first frame had been CHASE instead of the less known (but equally likely in Quordle) CHAFE Phil would have scored a perfect game. We can see how helpful the words were here: TOUCH for example gave four letters, including one in the right position, for CHUTE. In the second frame Phil guessed TODAY when the answer was TODDY. Again his first guess was helpful, giving the first two letters of the second word. You can’t get that close to a perfect game without a big slice of luck.

Phil’s strategy

Phil shared the strategy which has taken him so close. “I play adaptively to enhance my chances of big wins, so half of my games finish in seven, plus an additional 10% in six. My opening word is TOUCH, opening the possibility of certainty on the next guess for CHUTE, CLOTH, COUGH, CRUSH, EPOCH, MOCHA, QUOTH, SLOTH, STUCK, THICK, THRUM, TOOTH, TORCH, TORUS, TRUTH and TUNIC, or preventative BLIMP if -ATCH or -UNCH are rearing.”

Phil also writes “I’ve played Quordle long enough to learn that it sees every word in its dictionary as equally common, freeing us from torturing ourselves in 50/50 situations, trying to guess which option is the more likely.” Which I suppose gives us one less thing to worry about.

My struggles reaching the 500 Unbreakable practice streak

Like God Mode, the streak of 500 for the daily – Unbreakable – can also be achieved by cheating. If you’re in danger of losing the game and your streak because you’re forced to take a guess between multiple possible solutions, you have the option to find the answer elsewhere – again, by using a website with the answers or playing on another browser – before committing to your guess.

So, we can plod our way to 1,000 daily games, or grind or cheat our way to that 500 daily streak. One or two highly skilled, patient and lucky players might succeed in God Mode, but most of us mortals who have acquired it will have done so by cheating. We can easily shame ourselves and share a game result. But we’re still left with that 500 practice streak.

My experience when playing with BUDGE, FLOCK, MINTY and SHARP was that you would need to be extremely lucky to get that far without stepping on a mine, where you face a choice of solutions on your final guess. And this time – because the practice games seem to be randomly generated – there is no help online for the answer, nor can you play the same game elsewhere first. I had reached a maximum practice streak of 134, but 500 was still miles away.

A Change of Strategy

Luckily help was at hand. After I published the first version of this post in September 2023 bemoaning the difficulty of achieving the 500 practice streak, someone with the handle “Boatdweller” left this comment:

“To reach the 500 practice streak I think you’ll have to change your strategy (read: reduce the words you start with before you start rolling the dice on words so you can then afford two mistakes instead of one). My starter words, stolen from Reddit, are TRADE SPOIL MUNCH and then the guesses begin. Standard backup words that cover most other letters are GAWKY and BEFOG.”

This was excellent advice. My strategy of using four guesses to gather information had been leaving me too little room for error. So I tried using their three suggested starting words. Initially I used the quick and dirty approach, reasoning that I would try to rapidly rack up a long streak. It didn’t work: on average I was still getting about one in fifty wrong. I’d have to be much more careful to reach 500. This would be like walking a very long tightrope: to get to the other side every step would need to be as certain as possible.

It Worked for Me

There are other ways to reach 500, but here is the approach which worked for me:

• Find a good Wordle answer (cheat!) site. There are several: I used this one. It sped up my deliberations, and helped me avoid mistakes or hasty guesses by flagging other possible answers. For example, I nearly wasted a guess on PANEL, but the answer site reminded me that the word could also be PENAL. This gave me a chance to gather more information by focusing on other words.
• Double check every guess before entering it. Start with lines (if any) with only one possible solution, and get information from those.
• When you have filled in all the words with unique possible answers, write down (yes, pen and paper!) the possible answers for the remaining words, and analyse what information you still need – which other letters you need to try, and where you need to know the letter’s position.
• If you used TRADE SPOIL MUNCH as starter words as Boatdweller suggested, GAWKY and BEFOG are indeed good choices, depending on which letters you need to test for. BEWIG and EVOKE have also got me out of a couple of holes: other occasionally useful next guesses suggested in comments below include MAWKS, KOMBU, KIMBO, GUMBO, BAWKS, GAWKS, GUMBO, JAMBS, JUMBO, OXBOW, VLOGS, WAQFS and ZIMBS. (Yes, really!)
• Other starting combinations include SALTY DINER POUCH (suggested anonymously in the comments below with a detailed adaptive strategy depending on the result of the first guess.)
• Only enter a solution when you are sure it is right, or that, if is wrong, it will give you the information you need.
• Choose certainty over speed – it doesn’t matter whether you finish in seven, eight or nine guesses – you are trying to maximise your chances of finishing in nine or fewer.
• Be careful and patient (older cricket fans – think Geoffrey Boycott): remember, you are walking a tightrope.

Last Minute Panic

Even following these rules it wasn’t plain sailing. There were a few scares along the way, the worst of which came very late, at 499(!). I had four guesses to choose between BLAZE FLAKE GLAZE LEAVE on one line and STAKE SKATE STAGE STATE STAVE on another. As you can imagine, I was pretty nervous about messing up so close to the finish line. I needed to find two test words which would yield all the information I needed.

Happily (or luckily) I chose BEFOG whose G told me that GLAZE must be the first answer, and ruled STAGE out of the other one. Then I chose EVOKE: K in the right place (green) would make the answer STAKE, K in the wrong place (yellow) pointed to SKATE, a V in yellow would make it STAVE. If neither V or K were present, it would be STATE. In the event, the word was STAVE. I was mightily relieved when my ninth guess turned all green.

So it’s worth taking time to look at all the permutations and seek more information. If I’d just guessed at four possible answers on one line and five on another, my chances of getting both in four guesses would have been slim. This is very nerdy stuff I know, so welcome, fellow nerds.

World Record Streak

Quordle Grandmaster Phil (above) has not been content to stop at 500: using the strategy outlined in God Mode above, and “by treating nines as losses, for a safety buffer against ever really losing.” he amassed an epic Practice Quordle streak of 1,916 before finally tripping up on HOTLY and JERKY. I am going to assume this is a world record, unless someone tells me otherwise.

More Achievements in the Pipeline?

My quest has been going on for nearly three years, and now at last I can retire happily with 45/45. No doubt Quordle will soon introduce some new Achievements – perhaps based on Daily Chill (12 guesses, fewer unusual words), Daily Extreme (8 guesses and more unusual words) or Weekly Challenge (classic version, 9 guesses). None of these are yet the subject of any Achievements, and perhaps Merriam-Webster will be tempted to round up the number of Achievements to 50. Or 60. Then I’ll have to get back on the case.

I admit it, I cheated

I’m quite open about the fact that I’ve cut a few corners to do this. I’ve had help on these Achievements:

• Relentless (practice streak) – using help websites to find possible solutions.
• Unbreakable (daily streak) – testing possible solutions using another browser or device when in difficulty.
• Albatross (win a game in 5 turns) – entering answer found on another browser or device.
• God Mode (win a game in 4 turns) – entering answer found on another browser or device.

I only know of one person – Michael Himmel, above – who has scored an honest G-d Mode. That put him in an excellent position to get an honest 45/45, but he writes in the comments that soon after his triumph

“…the stats and achievements got reset, which was so demoralizing that I stopped playing entirely.  As far as I am concerned, I basically “won” anyway.”

I wouldn’t argue with that. But before pointing the finger at cheats like me, consider these Achievements:

• Step It Up (lose a game with 3 missed words)
• Are You Even Trying? (lose a game with 4 missed words)

You have to play really badly for these to happen. I think anyone capable of the other achievements would have to play deliberately badly to collect these. And is that not, perversely, also a form of cheating?

The Quordle Roll of Honour

I’ll leave you with the Quordle Roll of Honour. Of course there’s no way to completely verify a God Mode – like a hole-in-one at golf, it needs a witness – and few people want to spend their time watching someone else playing Quordle. So we shall have to rely on honour among Quordlers.

Achievement	Achievers
G-d Mode (4 guesses)	Anonymous (2June 2022) WORTH THERE FARCE BARGE Daily Quordle #129 Michael Himmel (3 November 2022): FLOSS AUDIT AUDIO SEDAN Practice mode
Longest Practice Streaks	Phil – 1,916 (to September 2024) Anonymous – 500+ (30 September 2023) Rik Edwards – 500+ (by 31 March 2024) Anonymous – 500+ (by 30 August 2024)
45/45 Achievements	Rik Edwards on 4 December 2024 Phil on 23 January 2025

This table only includes the Achievements records which have come to my notice, and I will update it as new information comes in. So please post a comment or message me if you’ve achieved a genuine God Mode, if you’ve bagged the Relentless 500 Practice Streak, including your current total – or if you’ve reached 45/45 Achievements, and when you did it. If you can send some screenshots, so much the better. Don’t forget to share your winning strategy. Happy Quordling!

And no, Google, I didn’t mean: wordle.

(Updated January 23rd 2025)