I only play on hard mode for this reason. My next guess must always be a possible answer based on my current information, and that varies the puzzle enough from day to day that I still find it enjoyable to play occasionally.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/upshot/wordle-hard-mode.h...
I also impose this additional constraint on myself, which the game doesn't enforce, that I can't reuse letters that have been marked gray. Sometimes you just can't think of the next word, or might be tempted to use a gray letter because that way you could get more information from other letters, but I avoid using them.
You can even go further—there's a set of 5 words which uses 25 out of 26 possible letters, leaving you one more word to enter the right answer.
But here's the thing: while that means you'll almost always win, your # of guesses will always be high.
> but if your goal is simply to solve (rather than minimise attempts)
Pretty much nobody's goal is to simply solve. Once they've played it for a few days, everybody's goal is to minimize guesses. That's the flaw in having a long word list—you always do badly.