Wordle 1056, May 10, 2024

I completed Wordle 1,056 without any mechanical or computational help. I believe I can deduce the answer from my third guess.

If you inspect the above image, after my third guess, you see that I have all five letters. My third guess wasn’t the best in that it doesn’t include an e. These are the facts about the letters in the answer:

1. i occurs in column 4
2. a occurs in one of columns 2 or 5
3. d occurs in one of columns 3 or 5
4. m occurs in one of columns 1 or 2
5. e occurs in one of columns 1 or 2

I think these interact such that I can derive the answer.

Fact (2), a in one of columns 2 or 5, gives me two possibilities, combined with fact (1):

• (1.1) _a_i_
• (1.2) ___ia

Fact (3), d occurs in one of columns 3 or 5, interacts with (1.1) and (1.2). There’s not 4 possibilities after applying fact (3), just 3.

• (1.1.1) _adi_
• (1.1.2) _a_id
• (1.2.1) __dia

The same sort of thing happens when we apply fact (4). Statements (1.1.1) and (1.1.2) have an a in column 2, so each of them have only one descendant after applying fact (4).

• (1.1.1.1) madi_
• (1.1.2.1) ma_id
• (1.2.1.1) m_dia
• (1.2.1.2) _mdia

Fact (5) actually eliminates any descendants of (1.1.1.1) or (1.1.2.1), since those two statements have an a in column 2, and an m in column 1

• (1.2.1.1.1) media
• (1.2.1.2.1) emdia

Those are the only two strings that can be derived from facts (1) through (5). emdia isn’t a Wordle solution word, so the answer is media.

More graphically, the reasoning goes like this: