Druggle: what can Wordle teach R&D?

What's the best first play?

Despite being an avid online Scrabble player, I have never played Wordle. Although those green, yellow and grey squares became ubiquitous quickly, I resisted… It has truly been a ‘now’ phenomenon - I saw a statistic that suggested only 91 players were using the app in November 2021, but when the New York Times announced they were acquiring it, the outrage from millions of new users could be felt just two months later.

This piece isn’t about the game phenomenon, however. It is, as always, to draw parallels to pharma development. I was intrigued by those who’ve quickly mastered the game, and are recommending strategies to others. Wordle is in practice a learning game - your ability to solve the daily problem faster or in fewer moves than your friend is where the asymmetry comes in.

Consider this article subhead: Finding the best Wordle strategy can feel lucky, but the best starting words put the odds in your favor.

I’ve written a lot on the difference between serendipity and luck, which is where that approach belongs. They key to biopharma is that the best ‘play’ in phase I should stack the odds in your favour for later, too… Importantly, the first play in Wordle should be a teaching play, rather than a best guess. Unless you think that you can get it right on the first try, your best approach is not to try to guess the word. Trying to get it right will teach you less than playing by experimenting. Getting a grey or yellow square early will teach you more than a blank square would. If all you got were green squares or blank squares, you’d be limited to guessing, with limited information from which to pivot. Serial guesses versus the collection of clues for the pivotal play…

That is also true for early phase in pharma - placing too much emphasis on the first guess suggests that you think you can make good guesses in the presence of little information - for ‘guess’, substitute ‘prediction’ or TPP. Instead, placing emphasis on a better learning strategy, on planned serendipity, is critical.

My hope now is that every time you see someone’s posted Wordle outcome you see it as a phased drug development representation - getting a complete green line may be the desired outcome, but it is approached obliquely… It is Asymmetric Learning distilled.