I guess this is where the tactics discussed yesterday come in. For your second guess, could you have thought of a word that includes all the remaining options for the last letter and then you’d have got it in 3.
Yes. Today is a good example of when it would work if it was the final letter you were missing (not going into specifics.
Yesterday, I had this. Couldn’t think of a five letter word containing F, J & M to test with (I bet someone will tell me one now) so just has to plod through the options.