Wordle 688 and Weekend Catch-Up

I solved both puzzles over the weekend. Saturday's puzzle (ANGER) was a solve in 4 guesses and Sunday's puzzle (GHOUL) was a solve in three. I felt these were both good puzzles for my new idea of guessing a single vowel word for the opener. A three and four are good results. Still not sure if these are just lucky or not, though.

Today, I opened with BLACK and got yellows for the LA. Getting this information made it pretty hard to try to continue to guess another four consonant word, so I went with MURAL. I did not gain any letters from that guess, so I moved the L and A to the front and LAPSE. I was still hadn't found the location of either letter which was either pretty impressive or just terrible luck. I threw the A into the first slot because opening with A made more sense than trying to hit the first letter randomly with A at the end. 

AIOLI fit the criteria that I currently had. I was also trying to find the other vowel in the word. I got a yellow for the O and was able to deduce the L's position because I had tried every other space for that letter. I briefly played with AOL--, but quickly realized that was going nowhere. I moved the O behind L and quickly typed in ALLOW. I stopped myself because the L was already wrong for the second letter. I played around and typed in AFLOW, which had the F wrong. I briefly considered that may be I was crazy and ALLOW was correct, but then I saw AGLOW, which I had dismissed earlier because for some reason I was thinking a hard AG like in agriculture. But then I looked at it again and realized that AGLOW was the answer.

Today's puzzle is a good one. I think I had some bad luck with my early guesses. I could've gone with ALTER for my second guess and had a much different solving experience. But I also made a few errors, especially when it came to dismissing AGLOW because I was pronouncing it wrong in my head as I typed it out. Oh well, sometimes you have days where it doesn't work out best for you. My streak is up to 26 and tomorrow is another chance to build on it.