Compare Wordle opening words by information, not habit

Compare openers with repeatable metrics instead of streak anecdotes. Against the actual answer list, record the average and worst remaining candidate count after each feedback pattern. A fixed second word ignores valuable information from the first result; choose it from the remaining partitions unless the goal is a deliberately simple routine. Hard mode changes the legal strategy, and answer lists differ between implementations. Track enough games to separate opener quality from lucky solutions, then evaluate both consistency and difficult tail cases.