I have a list of the 50 US states with the number of letters in their names next to them and have starred the states that have a unique number of states in their names. This makes it easier to figure out the state name early - if the state to guess has a unique number of letters, there is no need to guess the letters in the state name but if the state to guess does not have a unique number of letters in it, there is a limited number of letters to guess to differentiate which is the correct state. For example, an 8 letter state is the most common number of letters for a state name and they are: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Virginia - if you guess "A" as a first guess, you will see that none of the state names that have "A" in them in the same exact places; if there is no "A" in the state name then I would guess "I" because none of these state names have "I"s in the same exact places; if there are no "A"s or "I"s in the state name then I would note that the state name must be Kentucky because that is the only state name with 8 letters that have neither "A"s nor "I"s in it. When I start the game, I make a list of states that follow the pattern after the comma in the puzzle in my "notes" box and delete the states that I have eliminated in each turn until I have only one state listed in my "notes" box.

Once I have figured out the state name either by the state name having a unique combination numbers of letters in it or by guessing one or more letters in the name of a state that has a non-unique combination number of letters in it, I can then get a listing of cities in the state for that puzzle that follow number or combination of numbers of letters in the city that are in that state and narrow down the cities that can follow that pattern. I do this by listing the cities that follow the pattern before the comma in my "notes" box and delete each city as I eliminate it by guessing letters that would be advantageous in eliminating cities.

I hope this helps in making you quicker in guessing the solutions!