Second guess told me I was very unlikely to have a vowel in the second position, so I either needed a vowel in the first position or a two consonant opener with N or D. That meant a silent letter, so I decided to knock that out before looking at words that started with vowels.
Hmm, I was beginning to think wordlebot was useless--every time it disagreed with my choice, it was reusing letters I'd already eliminated, and putting incorrect letters where I already knew what fit.
Then I noticed that somehow I hadn't played in hardmode, even though I followed hardmode rules.