Wordle

I play Wordle most every day, it's just my speed. Some days the answer appears as if by magic, other days I am wrought with anguish. Today's puzzle was super-annoying. On my second guess I got three of the letters in the right place. Do you know how many words there are with the letters placed like this:

_ O _ E R (highlight to read)

I thought of nine right off the bat, and I've only got four places left to use. Well, what I need is a word made entirely of letters that haven't been used yet, but that doesn't help much. I've still got 16 letters to choose from, I may as well be starting blind. If I am lucky, sticking in some random word would help, but would it be enough help to be worth one of the four places I have left? I decided it wasn't and instead tried to eliminate as many words as I could from my list. Two words had a B and two words had an N, so with two guesses I was able to eliminate four words from my list. It wasn't enough. The answer was the name of a fictional TV persona. 

(H O M E R) (highlight to read) 

It was on my list, but I had discounted just because of the name association. Too late I realized it also referred to a baseball play, and it's spring, and all right thinking people's thoughts turn to baseball. If you're not thinking about baseball, that makes you some kind of commie. Wasn't that the standard test of suspicious persons during WW2 and the Cold War? Guess I flubbed that test.