Wordle 668: Is it Easy or Hard?

I want to get today's Wordle started with something outside of my usual, so I decide to open with BELOW, which maybe isn't the strongest opener with that W, but what the hell, why not? The W is not in the answer, but the O is yellow, so I've got something to work with. I go with an even more off the wall guess for word two and use PRODS. I get another yellow for D, and know that I need to start finding some other vowels for this word. 

I throw the DO at the front and DOUGH comes out pretty quickly. I get a good hit with that guess. The O and U are in the right spot, and the D and H are both yellow. So I know where the O, U, and D go. HOUND seems to be the answer based on that information. Or at least it is the first word that pops into mind. Sure enough, HOUND is correct, and my streak is now at 6. Today's puzzle was pretty easy, as I was able to solve it relatively quickly even with the possibly ill-advised opening guesses. 

It's days like this where I am not sure if there is strategy to make this game easier or if the difficulty or ease of the game comes down to luck. I mean, I started with a two vowel word, which I think is a necessity for this game. But how much did going with an E/O word help me as opposed to my preferred opening guess of an A/E word? All I know is that I wanted to use a word that did not have E at the end of it like I usually do. I felt that today's puzzle was easy, but if I had gone with BRAKE or TRADE, would I still feel that way? I don't know, and I guess that's part of what makes Wordle so addicting. You can only go down the solving path that you go down even though there are many potential alternate paths you could've taken.