The goal, of course, is to eliminate as many letters as possible in the first couple turns, minimizing the possible number of words in later turns. My approach is to:

• Usually check all the vowels in the first 2 turns, as this rapidly helps you diminish what words you can choose from.
• Check D, S, T, and L in the first two turns. This leaves only R and N unchecked in terms of the most used consonants. But I check the others because they let me move through all the vowels.

First Guess: AUDIO

This immediately checks 4 vowels, and if I get at least 2 vowels, I usually move immediate into guessing words that include D, S, T, L, R, and N. This starts to find correct vowel positions on my second guess, and starts to eliminate top consonants.

An intentional benefit to this word is putting U in the second position. If it appears green, meaning that it's in the right position, I'll guess a Q word as my second word, eliminating the chance that they're trying to catch me with an uncommon letter.

For instance, if U is in the correct position and there are no other correct letters, I would guess "QUEST" -- this checks E, S, and T, which are all critical early guesses, and eliminates this chance of a Q word.

If I get U in the correct spot and I or O are in the wrong spot, I might guess QUITE or QUOTE to again check on Q as well as other popular letters (T and E). Again, this also helps me find my vowel positions on turn #2 instead of having to wait for turn #3.

Second Guess: STYLE

Again, I only make this my second guess if I got less than 2 vowels in my first guess. With this word, I check S, T, and L (all top consonants) along with checking the rest of the vowels. Notice that I guess this, even if one vowel and/or "D" were correct in the first turn because I'm not trying to place that vowel or the D yet. I'm just trying to find / eliminate critical letters.

After this guess, I've gone through 10 of probably the 12 most important letters to check, with R and N being other highly used consonants. You can check those on turn #3 if they fit with what you've found in the first two turns. But often after going through these 10 letters shown above, you're well on your way to solving your daily Wordle.

Another Approach:
I've seen IRATE as another first turn move. It checks 5 of the top 6 most commonly used letters, including 3 vowels. I personally like to move through all the vowels. So if I were to start with IRATE, and didn't get at least 2 vowels from it, I would likely move onto LOUSY or YOUNG as my second guess. This would again eliminate all vowels while checking either L and S (the better option, I think; also puts Y in the last position, which might be useful, since Y often ends a word when used), or N and G.

The only thing this approach doesn't do is address that sneaky possible Q word. You might find that U is in the word, but until you know whether it's the second letter, that sort of hangs out there. I also personally like checking D, as it's the 4th most common word ending, following E, S, and T. My approach checks all these letters in the first 2 turns.

Hope this helps with your daily Wordle!

For band students who are passionate about music, getting together to play as an ensemble is the big redemption for school days. Sure, there may be other good teachers or subjects, but nothing lifts the soul like sitting in the midst of notes that soar into the heavens.

For countless students in the spring of 2020, the whole band experience was, well ... banned. They were sent home to finish the year online, any hope of ensembles put to rest. So long band. So long musical. So long jazz band.

As we head into the fall of 2020, many schools once again aren't getting together in person, including for my son in high school. And so, band has once again been banned, at least for the time.

It's a unique disappointment that they share. And if we're going to be disappointed with something, the least we can do is have a laugh about it.

So without further ado, I share my new "School Banned 2020" t-shirts and related products for band students who want to remember this and share a laugh about the memory as best they can.

Of course this doesn't mean that this story is on the same timeline as ours. Everything was moving in the direction of global government for a while, but now we seem to be having a global backlash against it, so methinks we slipped away from their timeline, which leaves us to wonder: will we really learn publicly about alien life this year? 364 more days till we know for sure.

​But it makes me wonder: if we finally did have hard, undeniable evidence of alien life here -- and I mean so obvious that you really could not deny it if you bothered to look -- but the media said there was no such thing ... would people continue to believe the media?

I wonder this because it seems like there are far easier things to believe than aliens that people still refuse to see because their favorite media sources deny them. Even though they are practically undeniable for anyone taking a step back and looking dispassionately at things.

2020, of course, isn't just the year we've entered. It's also in our consciousness as clear (20/20) vision, and I'd like to promote this as the year for clear vision. As a time when we can maybe step back from our biases and allow for other possibilities; allow for new information to come in and be considered. In my opinion, it's the only way to at least understand other people, which is necessary if we want to live and work together in harmony.

In fact, once we really learn to perceive the world through our hearts rather than just our brains, I believe we come to see as clearly as possible. If that sounds just philosophical, keep in mind that the heart has neurons just like the brain; I consider both of them brains. But we're so used to tapping the one in our heads, it's entirely dominant as our way of thinking. But it doesn't have to be.

If we use the brain in our head to step back and really observe things without emotion and come to understand those who are different, it also lets us begin to open ourselves to compassion ... what I would call a thinking process of the heart.

No one says we'll strengthen the heart to do our thinking overnight. But I deem it as the future of humans, and when we begin to see clearly by seeing from our hearts, then our actions will finally give meaning to the word "kind" in humankind.

Beginning with the phrase Dear little children, it is decidedly not a book for very young children. Think more of how Roald Dahl writes for both older kids and adults at the same time, including his frequent pokes at adults and conventional thinking, and you might get a better idea of it.

That said, for ages 8 or 9 and up, I suspect it's the only book that playfully but honestly tackles the topic of mud shadows, Archons, or whatever you might like to call them. (I imagine any religion outside of atheism has a name for them.) And so, at last, a confirmation for kids whose parents bizarrely keeping telling them that there's nothing bumping around in the dark at night.

At the moment just available on Kindle, the ebook tells you how to get an audio book version for free as well. Would love to have you give it a read and a listen and -- love it? -- to leave a review.  :)
​

​But wait ... does this really mean we're acknowledging ET life around our planet now as absolute fact?

Nope. In fact, I've seen some interesting commentary that the video the above articles are based on is bogus, based on considerations like: there wouldn't be any outside wind noise from outside the jet because the microphone is inside a helmet; and the lingo isn't at all how trained pilots would be communicating.

Be that as it may, there's an interesting aside here: the Raytheon corporation references this story, saying that their technology was used to track this UFO.
​

So Twitter is a storm of laughter and taunting about her incorrect use of the word "otherwise." Never mind that, scanning through their comments, I can immediately start seeing their own errors in grammar and punctuation. And after scanning one person's Twitter feed, I couldn't do much more than sigh and think, "Wow, this is just this person's life, filled with hate. At least on Twitter."

But for all the laughter and taunting ... they are wrong.

Not all of them, but most of them. One person's comment was perhaps correct: most of us would probably agree it's an awkward way to use the word, and probably she meant to use the word "overall" or something like that. "Cuddling my little nephew Luke ... the best part of an overall incredible day!"

But the taunting comes from the interpretation that she is saying she did not like cuddling her nephew. To the people who are laughing because they think that's what she's saying ... sorry, but the laugh's on you.

"... otherwise incredible day" definitely means that cuddling with Luke was not incredible. That it was something else. That's what "otherwise" means. No argument there.

But it's also clear that she said cuddling with him was the best part of an incredible day.

So if the best part of an incredible day is something other than incredible, it simply means that cuddling Luke was better than incredible.

Again, "best part" is certainly better than another part, and "otherwise" certainly means it wasn't incredible. So by definition, "better than incredible." I think that's a pretty good compliment to young Luke.

Now seriously, some of us are excellent with math, others with writing, others with science or history. Some of us know how to show compassion. Some of us are great parents. Some of us build incredible things with our hands, others do so with their minds. We all have our strengths and we all have our weaknesses.

Can you imagine where things are going if we all use our strengths to batter those who are weak in those areas ... and meanwhile we can expect to get beat up on our own worse challenges? Sounds to me like any sane person's nightmare. And yet that's what this kind of hatred and spewing leads us toward.

I think we can be better than that, and I pray that we will be. I prefer using my strengths to help those who need my help. And I prefer being able to ask for help where I need it.