[HN Gopher] Quordle: Four Wordles in One
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       Quordle: Four Wordles in One
        
       Author : a-bit-of-code
       Score  : 251 points
       Date   : 2022-02-17 14:24 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.quordle.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.quordle.com)
        
       | VikingCoder wrote:
       | Maybe this takes the fun out of it, but with Quordle, I've had
       | great success with:
       | 
       | TUBES
       | 
       | FLING
       | 
       | CHAMP
       | 
       | WORDY
       | 
       | With those, I've always completed all four...
        
         | tshaddox wrote:
         | I have less fun with that sort of strategy (I like hard mode in
         | Wordle). But in this variant I find it exceedingly difficult if
         | I _don 't_ employ this sort of strategy.
        
         | gary_chambers wrote:
         | I see you played the same meta-game that I did. It took me a
         | few tries, but I ended up with: WHISK, FRONT, GLADE, BUMPY.
         | 
         | Probably not in the spirit of the game, but once you have 20
         | distinct letters, it is normally quite easy to find the
         | solution.
        
           | mwigdahl wrote:
           | Mine are SHIRT, WOMEN, BLACK, PUDGY. I like that order as it
           | hits most of the high-frequency letters up front to enable
           | the odd early snipe.
        
             | CSMastermind wrote:
             | Well if we're sharing mine are: SPINE, WORLD, THUMB, and
             | JACKY.
        
       | core-utility wrote:
       | This was surprisingly more achievable than I thought it would be,
       | and provides a nice challenge with some strategy.
        
       | willis936 wrote:
       | After a few practices to get me out of hard-mode-wordle mode I
       | have found that spending the first 4 guesses on an exhaustive
       | search of letters (picking words with letters in common
       | positions) seems to be universally the best opening. Pursuing
       | individual words before 3 guesses is not optimal.
        
       | SubiculumCode wrote:
       | My favorite variant yet.
        
       | throwawaynay wrote:
       | just when I thought we couldn't imagine more wordle variants!nice
       | :D
        
       | GoodJokes wrote:
        
       | calvinmorrison wrote:
       | As many of you I took a jab at a wordle solver. That wasn't so
       | hard.
       | 
       | Then I said, how can I guarantee as a human, I win, in 6 moves
       | almost 100% of the time?
       | 
       | "Quick Brown Fox", as in, use as many possible letters in the
       | alphabet, comprised of 5 letter words, given that we have only 5
       | words to play with. That gives us 25 characters to use.
       | 
       | I came up with
       | 
       | BLOCK VENTS JUMPY DWARF GHAZI
       | 
       | this leaves out Q and X, which is fine. Using this as a template
       | basically boils Wordle down to a anagram game, so kind of defeats
       | the purpose.
       | 
       | But in this case, i was able to resolve all 4 at one time using
       | my above combination. I guessed, correctly all 4 with PLUMB GLEAN
       | VALID IMPLY. I then realized, you get even more chances on
       | Quordle, but I didn't need it!
        
         | DungZeekFu wrote:
         | True, if you are only shooting to solve it in 9 then it can be
         | easy with the right strategy. But many in our friend group are
         | no longer satisfied with 9 and want 7 or fewer guesses :)
        
         | david_allison wrote:
         | Doesn't work effectively for Quordle.
         | 
         | You have 9 guesses. This takes up 5 of them, then you need to
         | be correct for each of the 4 words.
        
       | imglorp wrote:
       | 4,6,7,9
        
       | oliwary wrote:
       | Fun!
       | 
       | I made one with a 5x5 square of letters, containing five words
       | down and five across: https://squareword.org/
       | 
       | A bit like a combination of crosswords and Wordle, as vertical
       | words can be used for additional clues.
        
         | tfvlrue wrote:
         | I've been playing this for a couple weeks now and have really
         | enjoyed it. Well done!
        
           | oliwary wrote:
           | Thank you! I am very glad you are enjoying it.
        
         | NAHWheatCracker wrote:
         | This is really neat and polished!
        
         | te wrote:
         | I think this (squareword) would be even more fun with a toggle
         | button to transpose the square.
        
         | danparsonson wrote:
         | Really nice but... surely 'Squardle'? :-)
        
           | madcaptenor wrote:
           | There was already a Squardle: https://fubargames.se/squardle/
        
             | danparsonson wrote:
             | Ah well there we go; wow that one is confusing...
             | 
             | edit: ...but interesting!
        
               | MattRix wrote:
               | Yeah squardle is convoluted but feels surprisingly
               | satisfying to solve.
        
               | madcaptenor wrote:
               | It took me a few tries to get it but I'm pretty into it
               | now.
        
         | aidenn0 wrote:
         | Nice, but seems to use a fairly restrictive word list compared
         | to other games; might make it more attractive to some people as
         | I have friends who say that "ZA" sums up everything wrong with
         | scrabble in one word...
        
           | oliwary wrote:
           | Thanks for the feedback! Do you mean in the square itself or
           | the possible guess words? Tried to calibrate the square
           | itself for a good balance between challenge and reasonably
           | common words.
        
             | layer8 wrote:
             | Not the GP, but "April" isn't in the word list.
        
               | aidenn0 wrote:
               | Many (most?) word games forbid any words that are always
               | capitalized. As either a month or a first name, April is
               | capitalized.
        
             | aidenn0 wrote:
             | Possible guess words. "unlid" and "mirly" are (possibly
             | over-optimized) good second guesses in wordle.
        
               | oliwary wrote:
               | That is fair! I feel like those should definitely be
               | allowed. I am using a wordlist based on this:
               | http://wordlist.aspell.net/12dicts-readme/ which is
               | public domain and has about 6k 5-letter words, compared
               | to the Wordles 12k. If anybody knows any other good
               | royalty free wordlists I would definitely be interested.
               | :)
        
               | aidenn0 wrote:
               | https://github.com/elasticdog/yawl is fairly standard for
               | word-games.
               | 
               | [edit]
               | 
               | Seems possible that wordle uses it given the 12k number:
               | grep '^.....$' word.list|wc -l         12036
        
               | oliwary wrote:
               | Thank you so much aidenn0! This looks great, will
               | integrate it in the next update.
        
               | [deleted]
        
         | hexciple wrote:
         | Been playing this one for a while, and I love it. I know it
         | won't always line up this way, but the other day I was able to
         | fill in 4 remaining words with 3 guesses and finished with a
         | score of 8, felt great.
        
         | sand500 wrote:
         | Heh, I got this as a interview question years ago.
         | 
         | Given a list of words, see if there exists a valid 5x5 square
         | of words.
        
         | saurik wrote:
         | This forces you to type extremely slowly to the point where it
         | feels super awkward :(.
        
           | oliwary wrote:
           | Hmm odd! Thanks for the feedback. I think it may be related
           | to the material ripple effect on the keys. Pushed an update
           | now that hopefully fixes it.
        
       | calrueb wrote:
       | Going to echo all the other positive comments. This is the most
       | fun variation I have played. On my first try I failed to complete
       | it, then went and did a practice round with some smarter initial
       | word choices and won (barely!)
        
       | lupire wrote:
       | Needs work to fit above the fold on small screens. Show fewer
       | rows of guesses, especially early.
        
       | saurik wrote:
       | Just wait until you try Octordle!
       | 
       | https://octordle.com/
        
         | SubiculumCode wrote:
         | interesting. but its a pain to scroll. I wish this went wide
         | screen.
        
         | CSMastermind wrote:
         | That was actually really fun. I wonder at what point it stops
         | scaling.
         | 
         | My feeling is that as long as I get 4 + number of boards
         | guesses I'll always be able to solve it but maybe I'm being
         | overly optimistic.
        
         | emp_ wrote:
         | 16 :) http://www.sedecordle.com/?mode=daily
        
           | neogodless wrote:
           | Guessed in 2,4,5,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19
        
         | mpettitt wrote:
         | The keyboard only shows the top four boards though!
        
       | fullshark wrote:
       | I thought this was a troll game until I played it and enjoyed it
       | thoroughly! Good job.
        
       | tobr wrote:
       | Phew, 7/9/4/5. Got the last one with a pretty wild guess at the
       | end. This was the most fun Wordle variation I've come across so
       | far, will definitely come back to play tomorrow.
        
       | DungZeekFu wrote:
       | Hi everyone I am the creator of Quordle and I am glad that people
       | are enjoying playing it :)
       | 
       | I also appreciate all the feedback and I am looking to improve
       | the experience when playing on desktop!
       | 
       | You can follow the @quordle Twitter for updates as well!
        
         | akersten wrote:
         | It's really cool! one small request: Can you switch the colors
         | for "guessed, not in word" and "not guessed yet" letters on the
         | keyboard? It's opposite from the original and makes it
         | confusing.
        
           | DungZeekFu wrote:
           | I am working on tweaking the keyboard to be more clear so
           | stay tuned for updates very soon around this!
        
         | dkonofalski wrote:
         | If you need CSS help or help with the responsive design, let me
         | know! I'd be happy to help. Switched from Wordle after NYT to
         | Quordle and definitely prefer the challenge of Quordle.
        
         | willis936 wrote:
         | I'm getting some weird words in practice such as "FETID" and
         | "SHALT". Is it reasonable to increase the cutoff of word usage
         | for the dictionary?
        
           | homonculus1 wrote:
           | Those are great words
        
             | willis936 wrote:
             | What about POESY?
        
         | altairprime wrote:
         | I love this. Thank you for this.
        
         | autoexec wrote:
         | Getting rid of the google tracker would be nice. I was
         | disappointed to see the New York Times added one to the
         | original game after they moved it.
        
           | fourseventy wrote:
           | Use adblock?
        
             | autoexec wrote:
             | I do, which is how I immediately noticed it was there when
             | I went to the site. I'm just not a big fan of the "I've got
             | mine so screw everyone else" mentality and I'm happy to
             | suggest making simple changes that will improve things for
             | others.
        
         | wil93 wrote:
         | One suggestion: could you put the four games side-by-side when
         | the horizontal space allows it?
         | 
         | With a 1792px width (Macbook Pro 16) I have to scroll
         | vertically to see all the games while there is plenty of unused
         | horizontal space
        
           | gdfgjhs wrote:
           | Yeah I came here to say same thing. I find it hard to
           | concentrate when bottom two boards are cutoff.
        
           | loudmax wrote:
           | I agree. If there's empty space on the screen, you shouldn't
           | need to scroll.
           | 
           | But after a practice round, I didn't need to scroll anyway
           | because I got today's puzzle in 3/4/5/7, so whoohoo!
        
         | djrobstep wrote:
         | Hey my partner plays a lot of quordle and had the following
         | feedback:
         | 
         | Three things:
         | 
         | 1. Love it! Thank you!
         | 
         | 2. Could there be a better contrast between keyboard letters
         | and the game board? They're a bit too similar. I use dark mode,
         | but it seems there is the same lack of definition in light mode
         | as well.
         | 
         | 3. Is there any way the whole game could be visible on mobile
         | (e.g. iPhone12 Max) so the last few rows of the game board
         | don't need to be scrolled?
        
         | sveno wrote:
         | This is really neat. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you for
         | building it.
        
         | cjkarr wrote:
         | Amazing work. I'll be adding it to my daily routine.
        
         | TuringNYC wrote:
         | Which word dictionary did you use? I tried coding my own but
         | was surprised as how messy all the dictionaries are.
        
         | aardshark wrote:
         | First, loving this version, it's just the right amount of
         | difficulty. It's slowly overtaking Wordle in my group.
         | 
         | Are the colors in dark mode different to Wordle? I find it
         | harder to remember which gray means unguessed and which means
         | no matches.
         | 
         | The keyboard doesn't display correctly with split colors on
         | Firefox Android, but the numbers at the end do.
         | 
         | Lastly, the share is too large. I tend to just cut off the
         | actual boards and just post the numbers.
        
       | tshaddox wrote:
       | I like this one. I've been playing it a lot the last few days. Is
       | it just me, or is it immensely more difficult than Wordle? I
       | think I only get all 4 correct maybe 25% of the time.
        
       | zto wrote:
       | It would be wonderful if this style of game had the option to
       | render all the letters in lowercase, my brain just seems to treat
       | different case symbols as representing different letters.
        
       | cableshaft wrote:
       | Of all the variants I've come across so far, I think this one has
       | the most staying power. I think I might prefer it to the
       | original.
       | 
       | I do kind of wish you got one more guess, though, especially if
       | you get stuck, like I did today, having 4 Greens but 5
       | possibilities for the final letter.
        
         | yhoneycomb wrote:
         | I also which it shared it simply as
         | 
         | Daily Quordle #22
         | 
         | 7 6
         | 
         | 9 4
         | 
         | vs.
         | 
         | Daily Quordle #23
         | 
         | 7 6
         | 
         | 9 4 quordle.com
         | 
         | 
         | Maybe you could add a link if you want to expand to the second
         | one. But it's just too long for sharing.
        
           | DungZeekFu wrote:
           | That's an interesting idea! It could be cool to have a share
           | link that could rebuild the emoji grid.
        
             | altairprime wrote:
             | 4 states x 5 letters x 9 guesses is only 180 possible
             | stoplight strings (of green/yellow/gray/black), if I'm
             | doing my math right? So you could just pick 180 emoji and
             | use four of them :)
        
               | reissbaker wrote:
               | I thought about this as well, but sadly, last I checked
               | some decently popular apps (Twitter, WhatsApp, some
               | others) don't support emojis in URL paths, only in domain
               | names. So the emoji technique could work for message
               | threads in some apps, but it would look pretty strange in
               | others.
               | 
               | (I've been helping @DungZeekFu a bit with Quordle and am
               | curious for any ideas around this though!)
        
         | sveno wrote:
         | I could see something like this beating out the original.
         | Wordle has to be 1x/day because there are only a couple
         | thousand common 5-letter words (around 2300, if I recall
         | correctly). It would turn repetitive. This game has O(N^4)
         | combinations, so it can be played over and over.
        
           | MattRix wrote:
           | I agree that Quordle is compelling but not sure I see your
           | argument for how Wordle would get repetitive. 2300 is six
           | years worth of words. They could shuffle the word list every
           | 4 years and it'd be fine.
           | 
           | I think a big part of what makes Wordle compelling is the
           | ritualistic daily nature so not seeing how this would beat it
           | out.
        
         | treve wrote:
         | If you sometimes fail, I feel the balance (for you) is right =)
        
         | brk wrote:
         | Would be cool to rollover the unused guesses from the solved
         | ones to the remaining ones.
        
         | cableshaft wrote:
         | BTW, I should say I have gotten it 2 out of the 3 times I've
         | played it so far, so it's _probably_ enough guesses, just today
         | I really wished there was one more.
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | The number of guesses are fine IMO. While I needed one more
         | guess, I also had made an unnecessary guess by mistake.
        
       | Vaskerville wrote:
       | Why stop at four?
        
         | missedthecue wrote:
         | They didnt!
         | 
         | https://octordle.com/
        
         | manwe150 wrote:
         | Next up: 10K wordle. You have unlimited guesses and must avoid
         | guessing any word not in the final list of 10000 solution
         | words. Your score is the number of right guesses before you
         | miss a guess.
        
       | NextHendrix wrote:
       | I'd like to see a cross between this and Absurdle
        
       | jermeh wrote:
       | I like this one quite a bit. I find Wordle fun, but a bit plain
       | sometimes. Quordle really makes me think out of the box to
       | optimize across the grids.
       | 
       | side note: I've gotten most of them, but today's ruined my
       | streak.
        
         | jetbooster wrote:
         | I feel like todays words were designed specifically to ruin the
         | day of the 'ROATE' users
        
           | Packofbezens wrote:
           | Agree, 'STARE' is my go-to in regular wordle and this one
           | stumped me at first. Still managed a 4/5/7/6 solve :)
        
       | kodablah wrote:
       | This is getting close to by idea of "Borgle = Boggle + Wordle".
       | 
       | Basically the idea is there is a boggle board generated and all
       | N-letter word paths found. The paths are made available to click
       | on (there are a few UI approaches to this). Once a path is
       | selected you enter Wordle mode for that path. Every guess must
       | still be a real word, but the neat part is if you even nail a
       | single letter, it appears on the Boggle board. And that letter
       | immediately appears as solved on any other path that overlaps it.
       | You can jump/revisit paths at any time.
       | 
       | Goal is to complete the board (unsure if there will be guess
       | limit, letters that are not on any path of course are
       | automatically visible/correct on game start). The completion
       | sharing will be a matrix of numbers instead of colors showing how
       | many guesses of that space across any path were made until the
       | first right letter was achieved. Boggle board size configurable
       | as is the min/max word letters (5x5 w/ only 5-letter words by
       | default).
       | 
       | There are some neat strategies here of path choice/switching and
       | guessing wrong words intentionally in overlapping paths. Will dev
       | if I ever get the time, but feel free to steal the idea and make
       | it.
        
       | AtlasBarfed wrote:
       | This is the best one so far!
       | 
       | This is like when I discovered calcudoku 12x12s and now sudokus
       | are dumb and boring. Just a lot better.
       | 
       | May the NYT acquire you for the level-up option.
        
       | mattcantstop wrote:
       | What I have loved about this iteration of the idea is that I
       | often don't solve the problem. That makes it more fun to me. I
       | like the difficult level.
        
       | amptorn wrote:
       | This feels like a cheap ripoff of Dordle:
       | https://zaratustra.itch.io/dordle
       | 
       | If you're going to put your own spin on Wordle, have at it, many
       | others have, but at least demonstrate some creativity.
        
         | dkonofalski wrote:
         | Are you sure Dordle came out first? It's only a few weeks old,
         | according to your link.
        
           | amptorn wrote:
           | Yes? Per the "History of Quordle":
           | https://www.quordle.com/#?overlay=tutorial
           | 
           | > It all started on January 29, 2022 when I saw an article
           | mentioning Dordle by Guilherme S. Tows and we all started
           | playing it as a group. It was a blast to play something more
           | difficult than Wordle
        
             | dkonofalski wrote:
             | Ahhh. So 2 words instead of 4. You're going to be really
             | disappointed by Octordle and Septurdle, then.
        
       | xmprt wrote:
       | This game is pretty cool but it doesn't play well on desktops
       | because you have to scroll to see all four words. In my opinion
       | it would be better to have all four side by side instead of
       | trying to fit a mobile design for desktop websites.
        
         | jonny_eh wrote:
         | Should use a responsive layout.
        
         | globular-toast wrote:
         | I zoomed out.
        
       | legohead wrote:
       | Suggestion: I play and share Dordles via screenshots. I'd like to
       | do the same with this but I don't want to use two screenshots
       | (have to scroll down). Can you have an option to sit these side
       | by side?
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | Or a "hard mode" where the four words are multiplexed. :)
        
       | przefur wrote:
       | A nice implementation, I really enjoy the practice tab. As many
       | suggested already, it plays poorly on desktops/laptops, I have to
       | scroll to see all four words, would be nice to see horizontally
       | arranged windows.
        
       | treebeard24 wrote:
        
       | gundmc wrote:
       | Neat, but I think the keyboard coloring could use tweaking. It
       | wasn't immediately obvious to me which were unguessed letters and
       | which were guessed but unmatched.
        
       | not2b wrote:
       | I was so close, solved three and was down to two choices for the
       | fourth (I knew four letters but there were two words and I
       | guessed the wrong one).
       | 
       | I used grep to help with the searching.
        
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       (page generated 2022-02-17 23:00 UTC)