So, is the predominant strategy exactly what it looks like? Pretty much hoping that either 4 or 5-letter word guesses work? I mean, I see that some would be easily, particular 2 letter, or two word answers with unique character counts, but I'm guessing the rest is basically just guessing and if the guess is wrong the run is dead?

Or is something else going on that isn't just obvious looking at it?

Yogi discovered you should start the game ASAP to mitigate any RNG as it seems it changes as time goes on. We do this by simply buffering and mashing start.

Restart the game, hold start (to buffer through the first screen), then mash start until you get to your first word. If your mashing is somewhat consistent, you should get one of ~10-15 starting seeds. You're more likely to get certain seeds when doing this.

You have to guess the first word based on how many letters it has. After that, you'll know every word that comes next by following this sheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ify8NGPnTyLHhuE7y8yU99F8X-ZnCN_aU7SlsbrG1p0/edit#gid=1646541719