Picking up from yesterday –
The puzzle I’m given is
A _ _ R _
_ _ _ ER
So, immediately I start thinking about letters that might end that first word, and what might help me there.
I know I get a little ‘theatrical’ with my side commentary or whatever of “oh, I’m nervous” or blah blah whatever [wasn’t really “nervous,” per se, was just trying to buy time to think].
I was SO hoping I could solve the puzzle, or part of it, without any additional letters – that something would stick out to me. And it just didn’t.
So, D seemed like a good guess. “rd” is a pretty big combination that it could’ve definitely been.
I picked H mainly because PCHO, last I heard, were statistically the best letters to call (and it usually worked out well when I did call them at home). And H gives you potentially a lot of info.
Looking back on it now, H probably wasn’t a good call.
The last word doesn’t seem long enough to have H be at the top for most ‘things’. Hover? Haver? And it’s probably not gonna be revealing a “ch” somewhere, because there’s just no room for it. “RH” isn’t gonna be the end of the first word.
So, I don’t know what I truly expected with H except for the fact that I think I was a little scared to abandon PCHO completely. But for whatever reason, it seemed right at the time.
If I were going to replace H with another letter at this point, I would do K because _ _ RK is also super duper reasonable.
I think at the time, I just wasn’t thinking about M. I thought it was most likely to be P, D, or K that ended that first word. So I thought if it wasn’t D and wasn’t K, I’d sort of assume P, and that I can’t purely just try to get that one letter, so I guessed H. But I should’ve guessed something else.
P was an okay guess, because that could be many places, and RP to end the first word is reasonable.
I will say, I would’ve almost never guessed M or F in the bonus puzzle, and I definitely wasn’t thinking of them for this one.
So, even though I could’ve called something stronger than H, I wouldn’t have called F or M. I still would’ve gotten more info, of something not being there. But *shrug*.
And then I called O, because statistically, it’s good in the bonus puzzle, usually – and in this one, it clearly was good, as it was the only info I got.
And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow.