[HN Gopher] Wordle Is a Love Story
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Wordle Is a Love Story
Author : jsvine
Score : 91 points
Date : 2022-01-04 12:56 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| vishnugupta wrote:
| This is an easier version of Bulls & Cows [1] game I played in
| college during boring classes.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulls_and_Cows
| ajayvk wrote:
| I built a version of Bulls and Cows at https://cowbull.co/,
| mainly for my kids to play. One difference in Wordle is that
| when there is a match, Wordle shows which letters matched. In
| Bulls and Cows, it just tells the number of letters which
| matched, which makes it a bit more difficult in some ways.
| detritus wrote:
| Thanks for this - it looks it'll be ideal for feeding the
| craving after my partner and mine's daily Wordle!
| garrettjoecox wrote:
| I've been able to play a handful of the past words with internet
| archive for anyone interested
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220105234455/https://www.power...
| giarc wrote:
| I can only see the top 2 rows of the keyboard. Adjusting the
| window size doesn't fix it.
| slg wrote:
| I tried this game the last couple of days and I don't get the
| appeal. There is some skill involved, but there is also a huge
| amount of luck. For example yesterday I had "ti_er". I guessed
| "timer" but the actual word was "tiger". That left me with a
| score of 5 instead of 4. Does that say anything about my skill
| level as a player? Honestly, this seems to mostly be a marketing
| success story about the sharing score functionality and how that
| led to virality on Twitter.
| prawn wrote:
| I went TIMER, TILER, TIGER and scraped in. I had been getting
| most in 3-4 attempts prior to that.
|
| The aspect I don't love is that in forcing dictionary words to
| be attempted, people can rely on that at the end rather than
| winning through word knowledge. My 9yo plays it and generally
| does well but was bailed out once by this.
| iams wrote:
| The skill is in not leaving yourself with two words that would
| both fit. If earlier you had tried a word with both an 'm' and
| a 'g' such as 'image' you would not have been left in a
| position where you would have to have a lucky guess
| slg wrote:
| It is much easier to work backwards with that logic than
| forward. It is impossible to both try to guess the word while
| also trying to eliminate all possible overlaps that may occur
| with whatever results you get from the previous word. In this
| specific instance, I would have never played "image" because
| my first word was "tears" so I immediately knew there was a
| t, e, and r. There was no reason to try to determine if there
| was a g or m until I was presented with "ti_er".
| spa3thyb wrote:
| Of course it's luck based - it's mastermind with a preset
| number of mnemonic arrangements. I struggle with it too, but
| the problem with systems thinking is that you don't get to
| enjoy the magic which drives the fad.
| rcoveson wrote:
| The appeal of vocabulary games is that they encourage you to
| flex your memory. They remind you of words you know that you
| might not use under normal circumstances.
|
| As for the luck, sure, there's some of that. But you have
| plenty of guesses to get to the word if you play according to
| letter frequency, and always maximize the information you'll
| get out of a guess. Think of it like counting cards. The goal
| is to shift the odds as much in your favor as possible. Most
| games are like that. Deterministic, perfect-information games
| are a just a small subset of games.
| slg wrote:
| But the goal isn't just to complete the puzzle. At least in
| my social circle, there is much more focus on the score
| rather than on just completing it. There are other word games
| that have a much better balance of skill and luck. The NYT
| Spelling Bee game mentioned in the article is one example.
| detcader wrote:
| My friend group doesn't focus on score, we just celebrate
| getting lucky or lament if we take until the last try.
|
| There is a point about luck taking away from the longevity
| of the game. Unless the developer adds more game dimensions
| (in the same minimal, non-intrusive way) I kinda think most
| people will stop playing in a few months
| Grismar wrote:
| It's only "luck" if you actually know all the words - most
| people do passively, but can they find the right one actively?
| That's part of the 'skill'. The other part is constructing a
| mental graph that allows you to find your way to the correct
| word within 6 steps, regardless of the word. An interesting
| question is whether there is actually any luck involved and how
| much. i.e. What is the optimal graph reducing the luck factor
| to a minimum, and is there a perfect one, if you know all words
| in the game?
|
| People who say "it's just luck" either don't know, or don't
| care - but it's neither a correct, nor a clever position.
| willis936 wrote:
| If one must judge performance in this game, then they shouldn't
| put much weight into the final score. That's why the share game
| button shows your progression. It tells a story that other
| players can understand. I learned to guess without using known
| correct letters by seeing games shared by friends. I know
| counting theory, I know Bayes, but it still wasn't a strategy I
| came up with on my own. The game is just something fun to do at
| a time where that is in short supply.
|
| Put another way:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/AkPPuYH
| dotsam wrote:
| Tip: don't look at the source if you don't want to see the
| answers (I thought the words might be obfuscated but they're not)
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| I was wondering about this but I haven't looked yet.
|
| ...
|
| So I just took a look now. Are you talking about the huge list
| of ~12,974 words embedded right in the code?
| bspammer wrote:
| There are two massive lists, one is the wordlist and one is
| the actual answers in date order.
| dotsam wrote:
| Yes, if like me you search the source for the word you just
| won with, you will see future answers, as they are listed in
| order (at least the preceding word was yesterday's answer)
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| ohhhhh, ok I see it now. I wasn't paying attention to order
| or even any of the other words.
|
| I made sure not to look at the words after today's as I
| don't want to cheat.
| hencq wrote:
| LOL, this sounds exactly like the Dutch tv game show 'Lingo'
| that's been on tv since 1989. Everything old is new again!
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(Dutch_game_show)
| Signez wrote:
| In France, we had Motus [0], which is the same thing but with
| longer words -- and it's actually an adaptation of Dutch
| version of Lingo! It ran on France 2 for 29 seasons and is
| widely known in French popular culture.
|
| [0]:
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motus_(jeu_t%C3%A9l%C3%A9vis%C...
| wenc wrote:
| What's your optimal 5-letter starting word?
|
| Mine is HOUSE. It has 3 vowels (including E which is the most
| frequent in the English language) and S which helps test for
| plurals.
| lostinquebec wrote:
| STEAR - not technically a word, but it is accepted, and hits
| the most common vowels and consonants.
| defect0 wrote:
| I've been using TEARS by same logic.
| iams wrote:
| The optimal starting word is ARISE, as it partitions the
| possible words most evenly across the different
| green/yellow/grey colour combinations
| lalaithion wrote:
| ARISE is good, but AROSE is better, and SOARE is the best: On
| average it eliminates all but 2264 out of ~12000 5 letter
| words.
|
| https://github.com/lalaithion/wordle
| iams wrote:
| It depends on your word list, are you using the same word
| list as wordle?
| lalaithion wrote:
| I do not. According to the original article, Wordle
| uses[1] 2,500 common words out of the 12,000 5-letter
| words in the english language[2]. I use the 5 letter
| words in the collins scrabble dictionary (which is about
| 12,000 words).
|
| The assumption you need to make for my analysis to be
| correct is that the letter patterns in the 2,500 possible
| answers is statistically similar to the distribution of
| letter patterns in the original 12,000. There are
| probably some differences between the distributions, and
| I'd love to rerun my code with the actual word list
| Wordle uses, but in the absence of that list, I think
| that my code does about as good as possible.
|
| [1] uses for the answers; I assume it allows all 12,000
| for guesses. [2] NYTimes does not specify which source
| they used
| xPaw wrote:
| The word list is in Wordle code, so you can just grab
| that.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The answers are also in the code which opens the door to
| speedruns.
| Syzygies wrote:
| Read the JavaScript? It contains both lists. Training on
| the wrong dictionary, tomorrow you might find yourself in
| a slump.
| npinsker wrote:
| I wrote a brute-force minimax solver (minimizing expected
| guesses) which tracks with this information:
| SOARE 3.45 RAISE 3.46 ARISE 3.47 SERAI
| 3.52
|
| Most 'reasonable' words seem within 0.1 or so of the
| optimal strategy. I think the second word is likely far
| more important than the first.
| bradleybuda wrote:
| I like TRAIL - no "E", but the next two big vowels and TRL are
| very good consonants
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| What a coincidence. I played this for the first time today
| and started with TRIAL.
| deniska wrote:
| Last couple times I started with the word which rhymes with
| "tennis".
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| What accent do you have that those two words rhyme?
| stewx wrote:
| The only word I can think of that rhymes with "tennis" is
| "menace". That's 6 letters. But I think I know what you
| meant.
| slazaro wrote:
| I coded a small program, and the sequence of words that I use
| (not interchangeable, you'd use them in sequence to gather more
| info) is:
|
| AROSE UNTIL DUCHY BLIMP GAWKS
| ddoeth wrote:
| I also really like JUMPY and INTER
| rusbus wrote:
| the optimal 5 letter starting work is SERAI (as computed by
| someone's AI)
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| There was HN post a few weeks ago to a blog where someone
| computed SOARE as the optimal word.
|
| Correction: a month ago -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29439191
| Syzygies wrote:
| In the 1960's my dad programmed Jotto (a simpler five letter
| secret word game) on Kodak's computers. Entropy became the
| first interesting mathematical concept that I learned.
|
| Log base 2 of the remaining words is a measure of how many
| yes/no questions it would take to identify the word. An entropy
| strategy looks for a clue word that minimizes the expected
| value of this measure. One optimizes sum p log p over the pile
| sizes.
|
| Pure mathematicians prefer certain concepts with a religious
| fervor. Often this has been informed by a reasonable number of
| problems where a concept has been proven optimal. The best
| applied mathematicians understand pure math but prefer
| practical work. To a pure mathematician, the rest are just
| guessing.
|
| Here, one needs a clearly stated objective function for
| measuring success. Entropy strategies are often optimal for
| simple objective functions.
|
| A critical detail for this game: The secret words come from a
| shorter list than the valid guess words. One wants a guess word
| that best partitions the shorter list of secret word
| candidates, not the full list of valid guess words.
| ineptech wrote:
| I always begin with PENIS. Maybe not optimal statistically, but
| emotionally.
| evan_ wrote:
| I use "RENTS" which puts the S at the end as a quick test for
| plurals.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| https://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/1479189616846639110
| [deleted]
| random314 wrote:
| SAUCE for me
| [deleted]
| lalaithion wrote:
| I coded some heuristics and ran them on a Scrabble dictionary:
| https://github.com/lalaithion/wordle
| iams wrote:
| With the first word you aren't necessarily trying to get the
| most number of matches.
|
| You are trying to use the word that once you get the match
| result back, it discards the most number of words.
|
| These two are not the same thing.
| lalaithion wrote:
| Yes, as you'll see in the readme that I have numbers for
| both approaches. The first section is the average number of
| remaining words after getting the match result back, and
| the second section is the average number of yellow and
| green squares.
| periodontal wrote:
| You might also try maximum instead of average. This is
| minimax and represents worst case scenarios for each
| guess.
|
| This is mostly useful for optimal play against an
| opponent (which is not the case here). Imagine an
| adversarial version where the opponent doesn't have to
| commit to a word at the beginning but must reveal one
| matching all clues if you can't get it in 6 guesses
| (basically, they can change their word when you guess and
| you are trying to make that impossible).
| gojomo wrote:
| As a handicap, I'm now beginning each new day with the prior
| day's answer word.
| av3csr wrote:
| I always start with HAOLE
| mhb wrote:
| Seems like it would be important to note in the rules that
| letters can be used more than once even if they're green.
| coverband wrote:
| This has become one of my favorites since I learned about it from
| NYT. It's more fun if you use the "hard mode" where your next
| word attempt has to include the right letters/spaces found in the
| prior try.
| supernova87a wrote:
| I wish I could play a few more games at once and not be metered 1
| per day.
| beepy wrote:
| If you happen to be on an Apple device, may I humbly suggest
| you look up "Three Magic Words" on the app store. It's a
| different take on the same root game, sometimes called "Jotto"
| or "Ghost."
| rockostrich wrote:
| If you change your device's system clock then you can play as
| many times as you want.
| matsemann wrote:
| https://www.fiveletters.xyz/
|
| Allows for continuous play
|
| Repo here https://github.com/sigvef/fiveletters.xyz (not mine)
| dbrueck wrote:
| Interestingly, according to the article, it was the decision to
| limit it that led to its popularity.
| kermatrism wrote:
| Not mine, but see https://foldr.moe/hello-wordl/
| d--b wrote:
| The game's great but I'm puzzled why no one mentions that this is
| a verbatim copy of Lingo, a 1987 tv show that's been adapted in
| many countries. I used to watch this in France where it was very
| successful. Once people got too good at 5-letter words, they ran
| 6, then 7, and finally 8 letters.
| Kiro wrote:
| It's obviously very standard (and has been done a million times
| before and after Lingo... probably as long as language has
| existed) but it's all about the execution here.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29784601
| egypturnash wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20220106042510/https://www.nytime...
| wffurr wrote:
| "It's not trying to do anything shady with your data or your
| eyeballs. It's just a game that's fun."
|
| Love it.
| paxys wrote:
| - Fun
|
| - Simple
|
| - One puzzle a day, and everyone plays the same one so you can
| share and compare scores
|
| - No account creation, logins, ads, subscriptions, data mining
|
| All the right ingredients for going viral. I just hope the last
| point stays unchanged.
| serverholic wrote:
| I feel bad that he isn't making a dime from this. I think
| people should be able to get something in return for creating
| value for others.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Maybe they enjoy non-monetary rewards? One of the joys of the
| internet for me is experiencing peoples' self-less creations.
| More of that please!
| rchaud wrote:
| This sounds like the writing prompt for a Onion.com article
| that begins with "local man".
| kevinmgranger wrote:
| I hope the third point stays unchanged too. Too many services
| out there optimize for engagement, the expense being the
| encouragement of addictive behaviors.
| rockostrich wrote:
| Everything to do with the game is hard coded into the client.
| I doubt there's any plan to change that. But I wouldn't be
| surprised if clones popped up that tried to maximize
| engagement/revenue.
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(page generated 2022-01-06 23:00 UTC)