9 ms·
Wordle Is a Love Story
- ChrisArchitect 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29784601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29784601
- wenc 5y agoWhat’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.
- bradleybuda 5y agoI like TRAIL - no "E", but the next two big vowels and TRL are very good consonants
- Sohcahtoa82 5y agoWhat a coincidence. I played this for the first time today and started with TRIAL.
- evan_ 5y agoI use "RENTS" which puts the S at the end as a quick test for plurals.
- lapetitejort 5y agoI've been using that as well, just one letter off of the classic R S T L N E
- gojomo 5y agoAs a handicap, I'm now beginning each new day with the prior day's answer word.
- av3csr 5y agoI always start with HAOLE
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Syzygies 5y agoIn 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.
- noxvilleza 5y agoI did some analysis on this last week [https://noxville.medium.com/raising-the-wordle-first-guess-bar-8770e0ef47d4 https://noxville.medium.com/raising-the-wordle-first-guess-b...], ROATE left the lowest average valid answers (60.424) but 195 in the worst case. RAISE was the second best average (61.0) but a much better worst case of 168 words. Both are just heuristics, there might be a better word than either if the game were solved.
- sbarre 5y agoI wonder if ROATE is even in the list of words. I'd never heard it and I'd like to think I have a decent vocabulary. The article says they whittled it down from 12,000 words to around 2,500 words, aiming for words that most(?) people would be familiar with.
- noxvilleza 5y agoYes, it's in the list of guessable words - however it's not a valid answer word. You need to use the WORDLE word list in order to evaluate how good or bad your initial guess is, using another word list will provide distorted results.
- sbarre 5y agoYes that's what I meant, is it valid in Wordle specifically.
- noxvilleza 5y agoThat's what I was clarifying with 'Yes, it's in the list of guessable words - however it's not a valid answer word'. They have two lists of words: one is a list of possible answers, and another is a list of extra (valid) words which can be guessed (in addition to the words in the answer list). Sometimes it might be better to use a non-answer word as a guess: the best case gets worse (since you cannot win immediately) but the average case and worst case both get better.
- sbarre 5y agoHah funny to see other people strategizing like this.. I did some research and (from what I found) the most common letters in English are: E, O, T, A, I, R, N, H, S (not in any order) So I came up with TRAIN and SHOVE as 2 starting words that use all those letters without repeats, plus V. WORLD is also a good one because it uses one of the most common starting letters (W, T, A, O, D) and one of the most common ending letters (E, D, S, T). Some other good starting words for me have been RIVET, CANDY, PLUCK and BASTE.
- ryzvonusef 5y agoThanks for the hint, I used PLUCK for wordle 202 and got a very good start
- labster 5y agoNo kidding, PLUCK has LUCK in it today. I went with PIANO first because I like to constrain the vowels, and got it in three.
- GrantZvolsky 5y agoI used ORATE which was a hilariously bad guess, but surprisingly effective at pruning the search space in later rounds: Wordle 202 3/6 00000 0?0?? 11111
- deniska 5y agoLast couple times I started with the word which rhymes with "tennis".
- stewx 5y agoThe only word I can think of that rhymes with "tennis" is "menace". That's 6 letters. But I think I know what you meant.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y agoWhat accent do you have that those two words rhyme?
- lalaithion 5y agoI coded some heuristics and ran them on a Scrabble dictionary: https://github.com/lalaithion/wordle https://github.com/lalaithion/wordle
- iams 5y agoWith 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 5y agoYes, 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 5y agoYou 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).
- noxvilleza 5y ago> You are trying to use the word that once you get the match result back, it discards the most number of words. This isn't strictly true either. Two N-sized subsets of words from a common initial set might have completely different difficulty in reducing further, because in the worst case there might not be a valid guess which nicely spreads the remaining words out among the 243 possible outcomes for that guess. Set-size is a good heuristic, but it's just that - a heuristic.
- rusbus 5y agothe optimal 5 letter starting work is SERAI (as computed by someone's AI)
- MerelyMortal 5y agoThere 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29439191
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- iams 5y agoThe optimal starting word is ARISE, as it partitions the possible words most evenly across the different green/yellow/grey colour combinations
- lalaithion 5y agoARISE 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 https://github.com/lalaithion/wordle
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- iams 5y agoIt depends on your word list, are you using the same word list as wordle?
- lalaithion 5y agoI 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
- Syzygies 5y agoRead the JavaScript? It contains both lists. Training on the wrong dictionary, tomorrow you might find yourself in a slump.
- ineptech 5y agoI always begin with PENIS. Maybe not optimal statistically, but emotionally.
- slazaro 5y agoI 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 5y agoI also really like JUMPY and INTER
- jgrahamc 5y agohttps://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/1479189616846639110 https://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/1479189616846639110
- lostinquebec 5y agoSTEAR - not technically a word, but it is accepted, and hits the most common vowels and consonants.
- Ichthypresbyter 5y agoI think it's an archaic spelling of the verb "steer". I remember the edition of Treasure Island I had as a boy has Long John Silver use it in the line "We can stear a course, but who's to set one?" when they are discussing whether to mutiny. Though when I google that phrase, Silver uses the modern spelling.
- defect0 5y agoI've been using TEARS by same logic.
- random314 5y agoSAUCE for me
- detritus 5y agoMine was ouija, but house is a lot smarter, d'oh!
- mmastrac 5y agoI start with ADIEU, personally.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nvr219 5y agoI always start with UPDOG.
- slg 5y agoI 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.
- rcoveson 5y agoThe 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 5y agoBut 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.
- _bfhp 5y agoMy 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
- spa3thyb 5y agoOf 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.
- dotsam 5y agoTip: 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 5y agoI 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 5y agoThere are two massive lists, one is the wordlist and one is the actual answers in date order.
- dotsam 5y agoYes, 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 5y agoohhhhh, 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.
- seedless-sensat 5y agoThe NYTimes spelling bee, which they said they were inspired by, also is unobscured in the source
- d--b 5y agoThe 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 5y agoIt'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.
- Vinnl 5y agoNine days ago :) > Fun fact: this concept is also the basis for a game show on Dutch national TV. I took part two years ago, and spent way too much time optimising our strategy: https://vincenttunru.com/hacking-a-gameshow/ https://vincenttunru.com/hacking-a-gameshow/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29713212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29713212 And we even went up to ten letters! (Albeit in a slightly different format.)
- Jasper_ 5y agoIt goes back even further, to a word game from 1955, though I'm sure it's been invented earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jotto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jotto
- kirso 5y agoEverything is a remix!
- garrettjoecox 5y agoI’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.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220105234455/https://www.power...
- giarc 5y agoI can only see the top 2 rows of the keyboard. Adjusting the window size doesn't fix it.
- Arnavion 5y agoI used devtools to delete archive.org's header div. But also, you can just type with your keyboard, including Enter and Backspace.
- MerelyMortal 5y agoYou can play any day by changing the date on your device.
- jasone 5y agoI've been playing this as a road trip game since a friend introduced me to it in high school. Depending on the age of the people playing (and/or the fraction of concentration the driver needs to devote to driving) we also play with 3- or 4-letter words. 6 is a bit much for me to keep track of in my head.
- vishnugupta 5y agoThis 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulls_and_Cows
- ajayvk 5y agoI built a version of Bulls and Cows at https://cowbull.co/ 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 5y agoThanks for this - it looks it'll be ideal for feeding the craving after my partner and mine's daily Wordle!
- coverband 5y agoThis 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.
- paxys 5y ago- 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.
- steveylang 5y agoSo when is Scott from HQ Trivia gonna start emceeing this?
- harscoat 5y ago- enriching for non native speaker. (Not so easy to come up with 5 letter correct words.)
- kevinmgranger 5y agoI hope the third point stays unchanged too. Too many services out there optimize for engagement, the expense being the encouragement of addictive behaviors.
- rockostrich 5y agoEverything 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.
- lapetitejort 5y agoI've already found a clone that lets me play as many words as desired with as many characters. The only downside is that I've burnt myself out two days after discovering Wordle.
- MBCook 5y agoWithout ads or logins to sell information from, what’s the need to maximize engagement?
- mhb 5y agoSeems like it would be important to note in the rules that letters can be used more than once even if they're green.
- MBCook 5y agoI’ve played twice now and had trouble. Today I had to resort to “cheating” using a scrabble word search site. Because I didn’t know that was allowed/possibly required. Looking forward to tomorrow.
- supernova87a 5y agoI wish I could play a few more games at once and not be metered 1 per day.
- kermatrism 5y agoNot mine, but see https://foldr.moe/hello-wordl/ https://foldr.moe/hello-wordl/
- matsemann 5y agohttps://www.fiveletters.xyz/ https://www.fiveletters.xyz/ Allows for continuous play Repo here https://github.com/sigvef/fiveletters.xyz https://github.com/sigvef/fiveletters.xyz (not mine)
- Syzygies 5y agoReset your clock to tomorrow's date, and play again. That's how I confirmed that the solutions are in order, in the JavaScript.
- supernova87a 5y agoHah, how amusing. Client side self metering
- lapetitejort 5y agoStrangely enough, this is not the game for you: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1334000/Wordle/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1334000/Wordle/ However it looks fun.
- beepy 5y agoIf 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 5y agoIf you change your device's system clock then you can play as many times as you want.
- egypturnash 5y agohttp://web.archive.org/web/20220106042510/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/technology/wordle-word-game-creator.html http://web.archive.org/web/20220106042510/https://www.nytime...
- jose-cl 5y agoI was scrolling for this. Thanks colega
- hencq 5y agoLOL, 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) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(Dutch_game_show)
- Signez 5y agoIn 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%C3%A9) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motus_(jeu_t%C3%A9l%C3%A9vis%C...
- Vinnl 5y agoWhich I recently found out originated in the US: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(American_game_show) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(American_game_show)
- techsolomon 5y agosee also: Josh Wardle's talk on "Why April Fools' Day sucks and what we did about it at Reddit" – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXzfvYoFQFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXzfvYoFQFo
- frabjoused 5y agoThe eligible word list is an array of 5 char words embedded in the script. After digging a bit it looks like it gets the word like this (pseudocode): dayOffset = floor((today - 19 April 2021) / 864e5) index = dayOffset % wordList.length wordOfTheDay = wordList[index] edit: It's literally just picking the next item in the array in sequence.
- ryzvonusef 5y agonaturally, clones have emerged here is one I found today, you can have multiple tries, and chose word length http://foldr.moe/hello-wordl/ http://foldr.moe/hello-wordl/ wonder what other innovations occur before we round back into scrabble
- ryzvonusef 5y agohttps://octokatherine.github.io/word-master/ https://octokatherine.github.io/word-master/ Another clone
- acberk 5y agoIf you want more than 1 Wordle a day, I forked his code and added a randomizer. Same daily word, same dictionary of words, same code. wordle.berknation.com
- wffurr 5y ago“It’s not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It’s just a game that’s fun.” Love it.
- mataherry 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30004743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30004743 Show HN: Wordlet - a Wordle Bookmarklet to add change day button (just in case you miss some days :P)