WyldTyle Dice Odds

WyldTyle's dice are weighted, not fair. T comes up four times as often as K, and E three times as often as U. Knowing the exact odds turns a guess about "what might come next" into a plan. Here is every face on every die, plus how often each letter actually appears in English words, so you can see where the dice are generous and where they are stingy.

The consonant die

The consonant die has thirty faces. Common letters occupy several faces each; nine rare letters get one face apiece. The last column shows each letter's share of all the letters in WyldTyle's dictionary, for comparison.

The vowel die

The vowel die has ten faces. E is the workhorse with three; U, the only three-point vowel, gets one.

Wild tiles

After a die picks its letter, there is a 8% chance it turns wild instead. Over the 38 dice rolled in a full game (nineteen turns of two), that works out to about 3 wilds per game on average, and a 96% chance of seeing at least one. Games with no wild at all happen about one time in twenty-five. Games with five or more are rarer still. The wild tiles guide covers what to do with them.

Where the dice and the dictionary disagree

Compare the two right-hand columns and some letters stand out.

• S is under-supplied. S makes up nearly a tenth of all letters in the dictionary, mostly because of plurals, but it gets only three faces, a 10% chance. You will often want an S and not have one. When one arrives, the end of a long word is usually the best place for it.
• The rare letters are over-supplied. K, V, W, and F each get a 3.3% chance per consonant roll, but they make up only 1% to 1.6% of dictionary letters. The dice are kinder to these letters than English is, which is why the high-scoring word lists are within reach at all.
• H is generous. Two faces, 6.7%, against a 2.6% share in the dictionary. Expect more Hs than you have obvious homes for. TH, SH, CH, and WH pairs, plus the interjections EH, HM, SHH, and HMM, absorb them.
• The vowel die is close to English. E, A, I, O, U in that order, on both the die and in the dictionary. U is the exception, slightly over-supplied at 10% versus a 3.7% share, and it is the hardest vowel to place, which is why so many players end a game with a U they could not use.

Turning odds into decisions

A few consequences follow directly from the tables:

• Over a full game with the default roll, you will see two or three Ts, about two each of N, R, and S, and nearly six Es. Those six letters are almost half of everything you roll. Build your words from them; anything else is a bonus.
• Each rare consonant (B, C, F, G, K, P, V, W, Y) arrives roughly 0.6 times per game on the default roll. Plan on seeing perhaps five or six of the nine, once each, and never plan on any particular one.
• Calling two consonants raises your rare-letter count by about a third for that turn and delivers no vowel at all. Calling two vowels does the opposite. The roll selection guide turns that into a turn-by-turn method.