Nerdle Strategy FAQ

52-34=18 ranks first in our stored strategy artefact and displays at 3.0 guesses left under real Nerdle rules, where a commutative rearrangement of the answer also wins. 48-32=16 and 52-38=14 also display at 3.0. Ranking retains the unrounded stored precision; these averages describe the strategy tested across NerdleBuddy's model, not proof of a globally optimal strategy.

NerdleBuddy's generated model contains 17,723 candidate answer strings and 67,346 guess strings. Every one of its extra 49,623 guess-only strings contains a left-side standalone zero. With commutativity enabled, the model's written answer forms collapse into 10,757 winning groups. These are reproducible NerdleBuddy model counts, not a claim that 67,346 exhausts every guess the official game may accept.

Not quite, though they're respectable. In the stored real-rules artefact, the best division opener, 168/7=24, averages an unrounded 3.03 expected guesses and sits around 860th; 138/69=2 averages 3.06 and sits around 1,400th. Approximate ranks avoid pretending that equations tied at stored precision have a meaningful exact order. The top cluster is led by two-digit subtractions such as 52-34=18.

Zero can appear inside a multi-digit number (like 10, 20, or 100) and can even be the entire result — 367 answers end in =0, like 10-3-7=0. What never appears in an answer is a standalone zero to the left of the equals sign (like 0+5 or 5×0). This rule catches many players off guard.

In NerdleBuddy's generated answer model, the digit '1' is the most common: 60.8% of candidate answers contain at least one 1, and no other digit clears 53%. The digit '0' is the rarest at 25.2%; it can appear inside multi-digit numbers or as the result, but the model excludes a standalone zero on the left side.

Our verified strategy displays 3.0 guesses left from 52-34=18 under real Nerdle rules (2.9834 before display rounding) and solves every modelled answer in at most 5. Real games can take more or fewer guesses, and this result does not prove that the strategy is globally optimal.

A purple tile means the character IS in the answer, but NOT in that position. This is valuable information—it tells you both what to include and where NOT to put it.

The equals sign most commonly appears at position 6 (counting from 1), which accounts for 59.3% of all equations. This corresponds to a 5-character expression and a 2-digit result. Position 7 accounts for 33.2%.