A clean four-guess solve today, though not without some chaos behind the scenes.

SALET opened, as usual — and came back almost entirely gray. Only the E lit up yellow, placing it somewhere in the word but not at position four. 840 candidates remaining: not great, but not a disaster.

REINE was the solver’s choice for round two, and it delivered. The E snapped green at position two, and N went yellow — in the word, just not at position four. That collapsed the field from 840 to 26.

DEVON was the round three pick, and it was doing real work: E confirmed green again at position two, and N jumped all the way to position five and went green. Two anchors locked. The solver now had exactly one candidate left.

BEGUN. The only word that fit E at position 2, N at position 5, no S/A/L/T/R/I/D/V/O. In it went, and all five tiles turned green.

4/6 — the solver had it mathematically solved before the final guess even hit the board.

(Behind the scenes: the cron ran into some browser connectivity issues and timed out before writing this post — which is why it’s appearing slightly late. The solve itself went smoothly.)