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Wordle Tips: Most Common Letters in 5-Letter Words

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During our daily Wordle games, it can be a bit tempting to go off the beaten path and guess a word that has letters like X or Q. It’s the equivalent of throwing a hail mary on the first play of a football game. Sure, it will look really cool if it works, but the chances of it being successful are slim. With that in mind, you want to make the best guess that you can from the start so that you’re not wasting those precious early entries.

There are certain letters that pop up much more frequently than others, and those should be the ones that you aim for first. The next step would be to figure out the location of each of these letters. Which letters are the most common, though? Some of them are likely very obvious while there are also some surprisingly common letters.

Obviously, the letters A and E are the most commonly used for any word length, with A being the king of the alphabet. Is it really shocking? After all, A is the first letter overall, and naming the first President of the United States is much easier than naming the 15th off the top of your head (it’s James Buchanan, by the way).

Of all of the five-letter words out there, more than half of them contain the letter A. Coming in second place is the letter E, which shows up in just under half of all five-letter words. As for the other vowels, things start to drop off rather quickly. O is the fourth most popular letter overall, appearing in just under one-third of five-letter words with the letter I just behind it. Finally, the letter U is the black sheep of the vowels, appearing in just over 20 percent of five-letter words.

So what about the consonants? In “Wheel of Fortune” you get the letters R, S, T, and L for free as part of the bonus round. Of those four consonants, S is the most common, followed by R, L, and then finally N. S is the third most common letter overall behind A and E, showing up in over 40 percent of Wordle-friendly words, while R is the only other consonant above 30 percent. L and N appear in about one-quarter of the words.

Now there’s the topic of placing these letters. The letter is the most frequent first one in a five-letter word, as well as being the most frequent last letter. A is the most frequent second letter, while E is far and away the most common fourth letter. As for that tricky middle letter, that’s where things get murky. R is the most frequent, but no one letter truly stands out. A, I, O, and E are all commonly used.

All in all, you could remember Aesop from the world of fables, except you’ll want to swap out the P for an R to remember the five most common letters. In fact, P should be one of your lesser guessed letters on your first Wordle try. That’s because P is in the bottom half of most frequent letters, showing up at 15th overall. 

The other big surprise letter is F, which ranks 20th in frequency. F is a four-point letter in Scrabble but is mainly used for longer words. As for the least common letters, you can probably guess the bottom five. In order toward the least frequent are V, Z, J, X, and Q, with the final letter appearing in just around one percent of five-letter words. Now you know which letters to look out for and where they should go. This should help propel your Wordle skills and get a streak going.

How To Avoid Email Scams and Verify Authenticity

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Among the most common types of scams that people can fall victim to is through email. Whether it be someone with an individual email account that they hardly ever check all the way up to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, everybody is vulnerable to scam attempts via email. In fact, more than 80 percent of companies and millions of individuals are subject to a phishing attack each year.

Estimates say that about one percent of all emails sent are from scammers looking to collect your contact information, banking numbers, social security number, and more. It’s scary to think that you are prone to about one attack per day, especially when you consider that only three percent of people are able to identify a phishing attempt each time that one pops up. Around one-third of these scam emails are opened, with many of these installing malware into your computer.

So how do you avoid email scam attempts and verify that those messages that are in your inbox instead of your junk bin are valid? We have some tips on how to make sure you’re using your computer and email services with optimal safety in mind.

Open the Email, Not the Attachments

There are some misconceptions about email scams. One of the more popular ones is that opening the email itself will unleash malware on your computer. This isn’t true, however, as reading the text from the email won’t do anything nefarious. It’s not until the attachments in a scam email are opened that you have to worry. 

There is one drawback to opening the email, though. The message can send out a read receipt to the sender, making you prone to receiving more of these scam email attempts. If you know what to look out for, it can be annoying, but won’t harm your computer.

Always Look at the Sender’s Address

Emails can look extremely legitimate, but there will be one thing that’s off, and it’s the domain address from the sender. A lot of times, people will skip over the address as it will say it’s just from a sender like “Amazon Customer Service” or “Paypal Support” in your inbox. It’s not until you open the email that you’ll see that it’s not from an address that ends in @amazon.com or @paypal.com. The most obvious fake email addresses are the ones that use a random scramble of letters and numbers.

Do Not Click Any Links

If an email looks even the slightest bit suspicious, it’s important to not click any of the links in that message until you know where they go. For example, if you get an email from Paypal that you believe to be a scam, hover your mouse over the links. A small window will pop up with the URL address. If it doesn’t lead directly to paypal.com, then it’s guaranteed to be a scam URL.

Proofreading

Large companies pay copywriters a lot of money to make sure that every email that gets sent out has perfect grammar and punctuation, and these mass emails go through multiple editors to double and triple check. Because of this, it’s almost guaranteed that there won’t be a single grammatical error in an official email. 

Quite often, spam emails will come from out of the country, and English may not be the first language of the scammer. Always look for poor grammar and spelling, which is often very obvious.

Install the Right Software

Thankfully, new software is frequently developed to combat scammers. Make sure that your antivirus and antimalware programs are up to date, and install a personal firewall if you have to. Another added layer of security is to use separate emails, with one sparingly for only important items like banking while other accounts for personal use.

How Badly Can Plagiarism Hurt SEO?

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When it comes to writing content, the one thing you want to avoid above all else is plagiarism. In some countries, plagiarism is considered a serious crime that can even result in jail time. While that’s not the case in most of the world, it can still hurt your website to the point where you’re hardly getting any web traffic.

Search engine optimization is the biggest driver of web traffic. Is there a direct link between plagiarism on a website and a decline in search engine results appearing for web browsers? There are a lot of varying factors, and we’re going to take a look at some of those, as well as how your website can be impacted.

Not All Plagiarism is Equal

When we think of plagiarism, we tend to think about copying and pasting someone’s work. That, of course, is the most blatant form of plagiarism and will have your website to lose credibility and its place in search engine results almost instantly. Then, there are those that want to be as careful as possible and never use someone’s quotations. However, quotations can be a very useful tool, and it’s not plagiarism if you’re giving credit to the person who said the quote.

Naturally, there is going to be some overlap in content, especially when it comes to keywords. If you’re operating a website that sells lawnmowers in, say, Kansas City, Missouri, you’re going to have the same keywords pop up as someone that does the same. Having “best Kansas City lawnmower business” while another website has the same is not plagiarism, it’s simply two businesses using SEO keywords.

Call to Action

When you’re performing search engine optimization on your website, one thing that should always be present is a call to action. This is where you have a hyperlink toward the top or bottom of a post, leading to a page where potential customers can contact you or find out more information. 

These are great SEO tools to have at your disposal, but you have to be careful. Ones that are simply copied and pasted from your other posts could potentially hurt your SEO, but in a way that you might not think. If you use the exact same paragraph every time, there’s likely no penalty, but tweaking it just a little bit a few times can be a negative. Try to come up with a call to action that’s natural every single time and try to use it in a sentence that doesn’t look out of place.

Paraphrasing is Your Friend

As we mentioned earlier, having overlapping content is going to happen no matter how much you try to avoid it. Your website can only talk about so many things, and there are likely several other web pages at the very least talking about the same things. Because of this, it’s important to paraphrase when posting instead of plagiarising completely. While there are tools that can do this for you automatically, you’ll feel much better when coming up with your own words on your website.

You Could Lose Money

In most cases, plagiarising someone’s content will simply get you knocked down the search engine results rankings. However, there are some situations in which you could actually be sued, especially if the work was copyrighted. That’s another big reason to avoid plagiarism, but there’s another way that plagiarism could cost you money that’s even worse.

If your work isn’t copyrighted, someone could just as easily take it as their own. Because of this, there have been a lot of larger websites that have ripped off content from smaller web pages and passed it along as their own. Knowing that there’s very limited legal action that you can take and seeing your web page drop down the rankings even though you didn’t do anything wrong can be demoralizing. 

5 SEO Tools To Help You Increase Traffic

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Almost everybody has looked for a specific phrase or topic in a search engine and clicked on the first result that popped up. Because of this, there has been a massive push by all websites to focus on SEO, or search engine optimization. Your website may be the best at what it does, but it might not be the first result on Google, Bing, etc.

To make sure that you’re getting the web traffic that you deserve, it’s important to make sure that you’re using the right tools for the job. Thankfully, there are plenty of SEO tools to increase traffic, drive business and get your website to the top of the search results. Here are the ones that you should start using right away.

5. Keyword Hero

Perhaps above all, the most important aspect of search engine optimization is making sure that you have the proper keyword usage on your website. Even if you think you’re covering all of your bases, there may be some ways to boost your website’s SEO with keywords even further. That’s where tools like Keyword Hero come in.

Keyword Hero gathers data and places it into a learning algorithm to optimize the keywords on your page so that they perform better in search engine results. A lot of businesses might be apprehensive because they believe that the updated keywords may negate their previous SEO work, but it won’t affect it, thankfully.

4. Bing Webmaster Tools

A search engine itself, Bing has a system called Webmaster Tools that allow website owners to tweak their search engine optimization to match what their engine is looking for when it comes to search results. Bing Webmaster Tools rely on four important categories, starting with backlinks and keyword research. 

From there, you can get an SEO report that shows where your website could use improvement and error correction. It’s a great tool for those on the go who want to scan their site quickly to make instant changes.

3. SEMRush

SEMRush is a catch-all subscription tool that allows you to get a broad look at how your website performs. SEMRush offers analytics for all of your competitors, while also looking at keywords, organic traffic, backlinks, and more. 

The keyword tool may be the most appealing part of SEMRush, as you’re able to automatically insert keywords where they could fit naturally, and you’ll also get a score as to how well your current keywords are being used and your website’s readability. It can be quite the “rush” to see how your website moves up the search engine rankings, as there’s a tool that tracks your position.

2. Google Analytics

Just like Bing, Google has its own analytics tool that helps you to climb the rankings of its own search engine. Naturally, Google has all of the information regarding Google searches that some other SEO tools might not have. Because of this, Google shows you exactly what you can tweak to make sure that your website is popping up on the front page of searches.

Google Analytics measures how many people are visiting your site each day, the conversion rate, revenue, and the average time of each browsing session, just to name a few of its perks. This is also one of the easier SEO tools to use, too, making it even more appealing.

1. Ahrefs

Though not the biggest name in SEO, Ahrefs is used by some of the biggest companies in the world. Ahrefs offers an audit for your website to see how the SEO is performing, and then matches it up against competitors and puts you into a ranking similar to SEMRush. 

From there, you can see what suggested content you should add to enhance SEO performance, and insert new keywords to your website. Like Google, Ahrefs has an easy user interface to navigate and is perfect for people of all SEO experience.

Forgotten Democratic Presidential Candidates

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Every election cycle, the Democratic and Republican parties announce their final presidential candidates, and those two obviously get the most attention. Along the way, there are many nominees that attempt to get elected but are knocked out in the primaries. Over the course of the Democratic Party, there have been some interesting names that were interesting but didn’t make it all the way to November. Here are some of those forgotten Democratic presidential candidates:

John Wolfe Jr.

Not many party nominees would be willing to unseat an incumbent that’s up for reelection, but don’t tell that to John Wolfe Jr. In 2012, Wolfe (who had lost four congressional elections in Tennessee by that point) attempted to take Barack Obama’s Democratic Party bid. While he ultimately wouldn’t come close, he still did have the second most delegates with 23.

Dennis Kucinich

The former Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, Dennis Kucinich had a lot of momentum going into the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. Unfortunately for Kucinich, he took on the more famous John Kerry in his first bid and then the massively popular Barack Obama in the second. Kucinich continued to serve as a congressman following his two lost bids and was unsuccessful in trying to reclaim his spot as Cleveland’s mayor in 2021.

Bill Bradley

A former professional basketball player who went to Princeton, Bill Bradley had a long career in politics, serving as a senator representing New Jersey from 1979 until 1997. After his term in the Senate, Bradley ran for President in 2000, but it was an ill-advised run. Bradley would be pitted against Al Gore, who had just got done serving eight years as the country’s Vice President and was a shoo-in for the Democratic nod.

Lyndon LaRouche

Very few people have been as persistent in their attempts to become the President as Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouche was in charge of his own movement and represented the Socialist Workers from 1949 until 1964, then the Labor Party from 1973 until 1979, running for President under the latter party in 1976. LaRouche then switched over to the Democratic Party, where he received some votes but was never considered a serious candidate due to his imprisonment. In total, LaRouche ran in every election from 1976 until 2000.

Jerry Brown

After serving as the Governor of California from 1975 until 1983, Jerry Brown attempted to run for Senate but ultimately lost. Brown then set his sights even higher, running as the Democratic nominee for President during the 1992 election. Brown had some early momentum, but Bill Clinton’s popularity skyrocketed, leaving Brown behind. Brown would then become the Mayor of Oakland before returning to the Governorship in California.

Gary Hart

Back in 1984, Gary Hart was serving as a Senator representing Colorado when he decided to run for President. Hart had a strong run, but was ultimately defeated by Walter Mondale. Hart then ran again in 1988 and was well on his way to earning the nomination. However, an affair scandal derailed his campaign, ultimately leading to Michael Dukakis winning the nomination. Hart’s career would recover, returning to the Senate and then working under Barack Obama as the Vice Chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council and US Special Envoy for Northern Ireland.

John Glenn

Gary Hart wasn’t the only Democratic hopeful in 1984 that people may have forgotten about. Astronaut John Glenn also ran for President during that election cycle, but would end up coming in fourth place. Glenn had a long resume by that time, having served in World War II, eventually becoming the first American to orbit Earth, and was also a Senator representing Ohio. After Glenn’s bid didn’t result in him being on the final ticket, Glenn returned to his Senate duties where he served for just over 24 years, retiring in 1999 and heading to space one more time before his death in 2016.

Is Plagiarism Illegal?

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Whether you’re writing something professionally and have a tight deadline or you’re a student trying to churn out a massive paper that takes up most of your grade, it can be tempting to copy someone else’s work. However, directly copying someone’s work is an act of plagiarism, and can land you in hot water.

Plagiarism doesn’t have to be a direct copy, either. Simply stealing someone’s idea or converting their spoken word into your own print can also be considered plagiarism. There have been a countless number of people to commit plagiarism and not even know it. You can hear or see something once, and write it down as your own, completely unaware that you’re plagiarising at that moment.

But is plagiarism a crime? The answer is both yes and no. Let’s take a look at the specifics of plagiarism and see the scenarios in which legal action can be taken against someone that commits it.

Not Criminal

If you think that because you copy and paste something out of a textbook onto your semester-end research paper you’re going to go to jail, don’t worry. Doing so is not considered a criminal act, but you could face serious repercussions with your school. Committing plagiarism on accident or in a very small dose will likely just lead to the paper having to be edited or a knock against your grade. The most egregious forms of academic plagiarism, though, can lead to a full expulsion.

However, we’re talking about the United States, where plagiarism itself is not a crime at the federal or state levels. That doesn’t mean that you can’t go to jail in other countries. In certain parts of the world, plagiarism is a jailable offense. In fact, Montenegro made plagiarism a crime in 2017, but that’s a rare case. For the most part, the worst that can happen legally when someone commits plagiarism is a civil infraction.

Paying the Price

In more severe cases of plagiarism, someone that commits this act may be looking at infractions linked to plagiarism. This includes copyright infringement, which frequently leads to civil suits when monetary gain was made with copyrighted work. If you’re posting a quote from Bill Gates in your essay or using Mickey Mouse’s likeness in an office memo, the chances of facing any punishment are basically zero.

There are a lot of cases in which plagiarism can be avoided simply by giving credit to the person that created the original work. Instead of simply copying and pasting what someone wrote word for word, you can make a reference to it. The standard is to cite the work, give it its own paragraph in your writing, and italicize it (if digital). This makes it clear that you’re simply using this work as a source instead of your own creation. For example:

“To engage in downright plagiarism is disappointing. It’s cynical, opportunistic and hypocritical.” -Saul Bass

Checking For Plagiarism

These days, it can be more tempting to plagiarise since there are so many thoughts that have already been put out into the internet thanks to the countless blogs and websites available. However, it’s also easier to detect. Instead of waiting until someone else checks your work for plagiarism and facing serious consequences, check for any potential plagiarism yourself through one of the online trackers.

A plagiarism tracker will scour the internet to see how much of your work matches with someone else’s. If there is a small overlap, it’s not a big cause for concern. You may be writing about the exact same topic, and therefore will be using a lot of the same words. The higher the score on a plagiarism checker, though, the more you’ll want to proofread your work and edit what you need so that you don’t get into trouble.

What Did The First ATP Tennis Ranking Look Like?

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To determine who the best tennis players in the world are, a rankings system is used with players compiling points throughout the events of the previous 52 weeks. Though not a perfect method for determining the top players in order, it’s a great way to determine who has been the strongest performer on the biggest stages in the past year.

Breaking down how the system works, winning Grand Slam events is obviously the fastest way to get big points, with the champion of each of the four tournaments receiving 2,000 ATP points. Points are also given to anyone reaching the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam. Other tournaments aren’t nearly as prestigious points-wise, but you can still get 1,000 for winning an ATP Masters 1000 event. Points are given all the way down to the ITF Men’s World Tennis Tour with Futures M15 event winners taking home 15 ATP points.

The ATP rankings haven’t always been a part of professional tennis, however. In the early days of the sport, the criteria to enter tournaments and where you were placed in the bracket were strictly up to tournament personnel and the tennis federations for each country. Then, the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) union was born in 1973, paving the way for earlier rounds of the tournament to be more balanced while the later rounds were more competitive with the top players frequently meeting for the title instead of at random spots throughout a tournament.

As part of the union forming, an objective rankings system was one of the biggest goals that players had in mind. Beforehand, rankings were determined mostly by how big of a draw a certain player was. “The ranking system was a hot point for the players and it continued to be very important,” said Stan Smith, a player who had been at the top of the rankings during that time.

With players taking more control of professional tennis over the organizers, the rankings system was finally introduced to the world for men’s singles tennis on August 23, 1973. In that first edition, Bob Kramer had been gathering results for the past 52 weeks in any way that he could. Whether it be mail or telephone, Kramer spent countless hours making sure the rankings were just right.

With 186 players being ranked in total, legendary American player Jimmy Connors started off the top 10. Tom Okker, Adriano Panatta, John Newcombe, and Ken Rosewall took the ninth through sixth spots, respectively. Australian Rod Laver was in the fifth spot, with Arthur Ashe just ahead of him. The previously mentioned Stan Smith was in third, with Spain’s Manuel Orantes at second. Finally, the world’s first ATP number one ranked player was Ilie Nastase of Romania.

Nastase would go on to win seven Grand Slam titles across singles and doubles competitions and was actually the first athlete to endorse the Nike brand. A member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, Nastase was one of the few players that were apprehensive of the rankings despite being number one, saying that the number was “hanging” over each player. In regards to being the inaugural number one, Nastase said “I won eight tournaments in a row to do it.”

A little more than two years after the men received their first ranking, the WTA rankings were released for the first time in November 1975. Chris Evert was the first female at the top of the world rankings, and she would reach that number one spot on nine different occasions in her illustrious career.

As for who has held the most time spent at number one since the rankings were released, they are records that are unlikely to ever be broken. A player on either the men’s or women’s side would have to hold the number spot for more than a combined seven years to top Novak Djokovic or Steffi Graf.

5 Democratic Politicians Who Surprisingly Failed To Achieve The Presidency

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Throughout the course of American history, there have been plenty of politicians that many felt were primed for at least one term in the White House. Not everything goes as planned, though, and all parties know that. The Democrats have had many of these candidates, with some losing out in the presidential election while some were ousted in the primaries. Out of all of the Democratic nominees, here are the five who surprised people the most by never achieving the presidency.

5. Howard Dean

Heading into the 2004 presidential election, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean wasn’t really considered by many to be a candidate with a strong possibility of winning. However, Dean quickly became popular and almost overnight turned into a favorite for the Democratic nomination. Unfortunately for Dean, he tried to emphatically rally his supporters, but his infamous “Yeah” scream derailed his campaign.

Dean would go on to become the Chair of the Democratic National Committee. It seems odd now that Dean was lambasted so much for his enthusiasm, but the internet was still in what was basically its infancy and the standard of presidential behavior was held to a much higher standard.

4. Michael Dukakis

By the time the 1988 election came along, no party had ever won three consecutive elections. This meant that Democrat Michael Dukakis was due to take the White House after Ronald Reagan’s term limit was reached. Dukakis, the then-Governor of Massachusetts, squared off with George H.W. Bush after defeating the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Gore in the primaries.

Similar to Howard Dean, it wasn’t his policies that cost Dukakis a lot of votes. It was a photograph of him in a tank that was used ad nauseam by Republicans that swayed a lot of public opinions.

3. John Kerry

Though George W. Bush had a very high approval rating after 9/11, those numbers quickly sunk due to the ensuing War on Terror. Because of this, the door was opened for John Kerry to take the White House and make Bush a one-term president. Instead, the Massachusetts senator lost the popular vote by more than 3 million on the way to winning 251 electoral votes. Still, at the time, Kerry’s 59 million votes were the second-most ever for a candidate.

2. Al Gore

Ultimately, the 1990s were a time of growth in the United States and the country ended up with a surplus economically. Bill Clinton was the president through much of that time, so it seemed like Al Gore may have been a safe bet to win the election to stay in the White House after serving as the VP for eight years.

Going up against George W. Bush in 2000, though, Gore lost the electoral college vote despite winning the popular vote. Of course, the election is remembered by the “hanging chads” and multiple recounts in Florida that ultimately decided the vote.

1. Hillary Clinton

Many felt that it was her “time” when Hillary Clinton received the Democratic nominee for the 2016 presidential election. After losing out to Barack Obama in 2008, Clinton was next in line and was going against businessman Donald Trump, who had never held elected office before. Almost all political analysts expected it to be a landslide in Clinton’s favor, but it wasn’t to be.

Even after the early results showed Trump in the lead on election day, Clinton’s campaign was still confident that a victory was coming in the evening. Hour by hour, the expressions on Clinton supporters’ faces became warier. Late in the night, Clinton conceded to Trump despite winning the popular vote by nearly 3 million, while third-party and write-in candidates received a shockingly high amount of votes.

How To Make The Most Of Your Wordle Guesses

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For many of us, we start staring at the clock when it begins to approach midnight local time so that we can play our daily game of Wordle. What can make it disappointing is that we spend all of that time waiting only to guess six times without matching more than one letter. It happens, but there are ways that it can be avoided. 

Though it may not seem like it on the surface, Wordle actually does require a fair bit of strategy. Before you make your first guess, there are some things to look out for. Following these tips, you can knock out Wordle every day by the end of the fourth guess.

Wheel of Fortune Rule

If you’ve ever watched “Wheel of Fortune”, then you know that in the final round, contestants are given the letters R, S, T, L, N, and E. Try to apply this strategy in your daily game of Wordle by starting with words like “stern.” If you’re getting tired of using “stern” to start off every day, try to throw in the letter A, the other most common vowel, with words like “learn,” “stare,” or “rates” to name a few.

If these two particular vowels aren’t on the board, that eliminates a massive amount of potential words that the answer could be. If you’re starting with letters like Q, Z, or X, you’re essentially wasting a turn if those letters aren’t present. 

Vowels at the Start

There is always going to be at least one vowel on the board (even if it’s a Y), but it’s all a matter of finding out where it is. Don’t be afraid to try and use a vowel as the first letter of a word. It’s tempting to always start with a consonant, but Wordle has been known to use words that often start with an A or E to throw people off. Words like “award” or “eagle” can be very tricky, especially since they use the same vowel twice. For a bonus tip: try starting out with the word “audio” since it uses four of the vowels all at once.

Never Use Double Letters On The First Guess

Unless you’re trying to go all out and get the word correctly on the very first try, don’t spend your opening turn using double letters. Knowing what is and isn’t on the board is the most important aspect of Wordle. If you’re guessing a word that has double letters and that particular letter doesn’t appear at all, that’s just one more letter that could’ve been used differently.

Don’t Forget C and H

Perhaps two of the most underutilized letters in Wordle are the letters C and H. It can be easy to ignore since they’re not one of those “Wheel of Fortune” letters or a vowel. However, C and H are used more often than you think. In fact, C is the 10th most used letter in the English language. These two often go hand in hand in words, so be on the lookout for words that end in -ch like “watch,” “beach,” or “mulch.”

Take Your Time

One of the biggest enemies of success is impatience, even when it comes to Wordle. Quite often, people will type their guess and hit ‘enter’ without even thinking about it. Rushing can cause you to place the same letter in a spot that was highlighted in yellow and burn through your guesses quickly. Remember, if you start your Wordle round right at midnight, you have a full 24 hours to think of the perfect word. Hopefully you don’t have to sit there all day to think about one word, but you can if you need to.

Dabo Swinney’s Road to Becoming a Clemson Tiger Legend

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Though there had been brief spurts of success throughout the school’s history, the Clemson football team was never a sustained powerhouse until coach William “Dabo” Swinney came along. Before his arrival, the Tigers had just one national championship. Then-coach Danny Ford had led the team to much success, but had a falling out with the administration and left following the 1989 season. For years afterward, though, Clemson football was in purgatory.

Following Ford was Ken Hatfield, who had the same problem with the administration and left the school in 1993. Tommy West then stepped in, but his teams got progressively worse each year. Tommy Bowden became Clemson’s mainstay from 1999 until 2008. Bowden resigned in the middle of the season, with Swinney taking over as the interim head coach.

Clemson didn’t have quite the prestige of a Notre Dame or Ohio State type of school at the time, but many were still surprised that a relatively unknown position coach was given the keys to the Clemson program when he was named the permanent head coach. For Clemson, it made sense as Swinney was considered one of the best recruiters in the nation. In college football, that can be more valuable than drawing up a good game plan.

What did Swinney’s road to becoming the Clemson coach look like? A lot of his history is tied to another college football program that Swinney has gone head-to-head with many times as a coach: the University of Alabama. Swinney was born in Alabama and remained in the state for the entirety of his young life. He walked on to the Crimson Tide team as a wide receiver, playing for three seasons mainly as a backup.

Swinney chose to attend graduate school at his alma mater while also taking on an assistant job on the Alabama coaching staff. Following three seasons, Swinney was given a more prominent role. From 1996 to 2000, Swinney served as both a wide receivers coach and tight ends coach. In his final season, though, Alabama struggled mightily, finishing 3-8 and unranked after starting the year ranked #3 in the country.

With that, Swinney’s coaching career almost ended entirely. He instead went to work in the real estate industry with a friend and former Alabama assistant coach. It wasn’t until Tommy Bowden took the job at Clemson that Swinney got back on the sidelines. Bowden was the wide receivers coach at Alabama during Swinney’s playing days, meaning that Clemson’s hiring of Bowden opened up a door that they never would’ve expected.

It was a shaky first couple of years for Swinney, including one season with a losing record. However, Swinney would right the ship and became one of the most prominent figures in the rich history of Clemson Tigers football. Swinney became the second Clemson coach to win a national championship for the program, and the first coach to win multiple titles.

Interestingly enough, Swinney had no interest in becoming a coach once his playing days were over. It was by chance that he went to watch an Alabama practice while he was in grad school, but his former coach spotted him. “Next thing I know, coach (Gene) Stallings, he’s like, ‘Hey, you need to get a master’s degree, I’m gonna pay for it, and I need a graduate assistant coach, and you start in July,’” Swinney said. “I had never even thought about coaching a day in my life.”

Afraid to say no to Stallings, Swinney wound up taking the job. Within the first couple of days, Swinney knew that he made the right call. Sometimes all it takes is a little push in the right direction to find your calling, and that’s what happened to Swinney on that spring day in Tuscaloosa.