For Wordle 244 I removed the guard rails and enabled hard mode. Which enabled a different set of guard rails. The kind that made use of the green and yellow letters in each subsequent guess.
In a way, it’s a boon. Causing the user to focus on letters that they do know, aids the player in turning yellow letters into green.
The flip side being that now the player’s vocabulary is challenged. Especially when the first letter is unknown. There is no free associating, multiple choice style of gameplay. Words with completely different letters can’t be chosen, severely limiting the letters that will be revealed.
I enjoyed the thoughtful challenge. Most Wordles take me around three to five minutes to solve. This one played for over an hour. Sure, there were a few breaks where I did something else hoping it would jar the word loose.
Eventually, once I realized it was time to consider a letter being used twice, I solved it. Narrowly dodging failure.