Quarrel Today – Hints and Answers for Sunday, July 16 (Game #538)

Quardle needs to be approached differently from Wordle. With four puzzles to solve in nine guesses, you can’t blindly throw letters at it and expect to win – you’ll have a far better chance if you think strategically.

Of course, this is also the case in Wordle, but it is even more important in Quardle.

There are two key things to remember.

1. Use lots of opening words

First, you won’t want just one opening word, but almost certainly two or three initial word.

The first of these should probably be one of the best Wordle beginners, because the things that make them work so well will apply here as well. But after that, you should choose another word or possibly two that use a lot more common consonants and contain the remaining vowels.

For example, I currently use STARE > DOILY > PUNCH. Between them, these three words use 15 of the 26 letters of the alphabet including all five vowels, y and the nine most common consonants (s, t, r, d, l, p, n, c and h). There are lots of other options – you might want to get an M, B, F or G instead of an H – but something like this should do.

If all goes well, this will give you a good lead on one or sometimes two answers. If not, good luck!

2. Narrow things down

Secondly, if you encounter a word that could easily be answered by one of several options – for example -ATCH, where it could be MATCH, BATCH, LATCH, CATCH, WATCH, HATCH or PATCH – then You definitely want to do this. Guess the word that narrows down those options.

In Wordle, you can try several of them in succession and hope that one is correct, assuming you have enough guesses left. It’s risky, but will work sometimes. Also, it is the only option in Hard Mode. But in Quardle, this will almost certainly result in failure – you don’t have enough estimates.

In the above scenario, CLAMP would be a good guess, as it can tell the path to four of the seven words at a time.