> I'd quickly realised that a set of words which covered most of the alphabet (20 words, leaving b, g, j, q, v, and z excluded) allowed solving virtually all Wordle puzzles. The game quickly lost any challenge.

You can even go further—there's a set of 5 words which uses 25 out of 26 possible letters, leaving you one more word to enter the right answer.

But here's the thing: while that means you'll almost always win, your # of guesses will always be high.

> but if your goal is simply to solve (rather than minimise attempts)

Pretty much nobody's goal is to simply solve. Once they've played it for a few days, everybody's goal is to minimize guesses. That's the flaw in having a long word list—you always do badly.