Algorithm to recover missing 12th word (of 12) in BIP39 mnemonic

Question

I'm trying to recover my Wasabi wallet. For some reason the 12th word of the 12-word mnemonic I wrote was wrong (not in BIP39 list). I could manually guess up to 2048 times, but was hoping there might be an algorithmic way to work through an array of the 2048 words and associate the result with my public keys for the wallet to find the right word.

I'm a newbie programmer, so any guidance on an approach to solve would greatly help and help me avoid a long manual slog. Thanks.

There is a 4-bit checksum, and there is code such as https://github.com/bharathrao/bip39check to list words that satisfy the checksum, so that should cut you down to roughly 128 possibilities. — Nate Eldredge, Aug 13 '19 at 17:00
That definitely makes it a more manageable manual task... thanks Nate! — jcintexas, Aug 13 '19 at 17:17
Does this answer your question? Lost my Bitcoin wallet and have only 11 out of 12 mnemonic seed phrase words. How can I get my Bitcoins? — RedGrittyBrick, Aug 28 '22 at 22:25
I created a little tool for this a while back: https://sutterseba.github.io/. Make sure to run it offline and verify the code first. — sutterseba, Sep 28 '22 at 16:40

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 29 '22 at 14:31

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I suggest using the Seed Tool: https://bitcoiner.guide/seed/

answered Aug 29 '22 at 14:31

Greg Tonoski

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We generally like answers to be a more elaborate here. Since the asker stated that he is a programming novice, you could for example further explain how the asker would use the tool to recover the missing word. Note that we generally remove link-only answers as low-quality. – Murch Sep 01 '22 at 19:02

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 14 '19 at 10:03

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You will have to check up to 128 variants. Try this software: https://kzen-networks.github.io/mnemonic-recovery/src/index.html

answered Aug 14 '19 at 10:03

ik15

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Please be very careful before entering even key information into a random website, and make sure to review the code. – Raghav Sood Aug 14 '19 at 12:04
Thanks for this suggestion & caution and I'll try it with the code on an air-gapped PC. – jcintexas Aug 14 '19 at 20:56
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This is almost a link-only answer. And the link is no longer valid (error 404) – RedGrittyBrick Apr 30 '22 at 16:21

Algorithm to recover missing 12th word (of 12) in BIP39 mnemonic

2 Answers2