Pete's Log: Party Years

Entry #2468, (Word Games and Puzzles)
(posted when I was 45 years old.)

Time for another one of these. For the New Year, YEARS seemed the obvious candidate, but then on New Year's Eve I saw PARTY all the way at #11 compared to #27 for YEARS. But YEARS rallied on New Year's Day, hitting #7 compared to #12 for PARTY.

Most popular starting Wordle words on December 31, 2023: Top 15 are ADIEU, SLATE, STARE, AUDIO, RAISE, ARISE, CRANE, TRAIN, IRATE,GREAT, PARTY, AISLE, HEART, HOUSE, STEAM, then bolded is #27: YEARSMost popular starting Wordle words on January 1, 2024: Top 16 are ADIEU, SLATE, STARE, AUDIO, RAISE, ARISE, YEARS, CRANE, IRATE, TRAIN, GREAT, PARTY, HEART, AISLE, HOUSE, STEAM

I didn't start tracking PARTY until the 31st, so my graph is incomplete again.

Graph of popularity of YEARS and PARTY as starting Wordle words. The X axis shows dates from 28 through 4. The Y axis values up to 300. YEARS starts on the 28th and has the values 209, 197, 145, 27, 7, 118, 245 and 276. Party starts on the 31st and has the values 11, 12, 77, 86, 84

Valentine's Day should be interesting: I'm thinking CANDY and HEART so far, but HEART is already one of the top 15 most popular starting words. HEART is usually chosen by about 0.8% of Wordle players, and when MERRY and YEARS both broke the top 10 on their respective holidays, they got about 1.5% of the vote. So I don't think HEART will do much better than fifth place, since #1 ADIEU rakes in more than 7% of the vote and 2-5 are all above 3%. But we shall see. Stay tuned to find out!