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For anyone wondering what this was ... looking at the last Archive.org link here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220401002723/https://www.devangthakkar.com/word

For anyone wondering what this was ... looking at the last Archive.org link here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220401002723/https://www.devangthakkar.com/wordle_archive/?284 https://web.archive.org/web/20220401002723/https://www.devan... ...it looks like this might have had playable versions of daily Wordle puzzles going back to the start of the game? (Which would be pretty trivial since IIRC Wordle is entirely client-side and they just update the JS each day with the new word?) If so then his statement - "to be honest, I was wondering what took them so long" - would sort of make sense. EDIT - Github repo before NYT-inspired deletion: https://github.com/DevangThakkar/wordle_archive/tree/23cfba6a97cd61cc6b01ed8a399eb6df90dad88d https://github.com/DevangThakkar/wordle_archive/tree/23cfba6...

brian_herman 4y ago
Thank you for the insightful comment.
femto 4y ago
> ...update the JS each day with the new word Even more hands off than that. The script contained the entire list of words and each day it just moved to the next entry in the list. It makes sense, in that originating as a fun personal project the author wouldn't want to be burdened with a daily update task. Edit: Out of curiosity I had a look at the Wordle on the NYT site, and it's still the same script.
- mattbuilds 4y ago
  That’s a perfect example of solving for the problem you have and not over engineering.
  - pdpi 4y ago
    It's also a perfect example of actually understanding the problem you're trying to solve (which is a prerequisite for not overengineering). Wordle is a tiny word puzzle game with no stakes. So, while this architecture makes it trivially easy to cheat, there's also zero reason to do so. You're just robbing yourself of the fun in order to... do what, exactly? Brag about it?
    - Hamuko 4y ago
      Unfortunately it also allows to rob other people of the fun, as there has been multiple Twitter bots spreading the future words. I think one even replied to people's Wordle score tweets.
      - WilTimSon 4y ago
        That's a good example of how just a few malicious knobs ruin the fun for everyone else. I suppose blocking those bots isn't difficult but the fact that someone went out of their way to code one is so sad.
      - chme 4y ago
        Well... Aren't the twitter bots then the bad actor? I wouldn't complain that wikipedia exists when I am answering a quiz... I don't think a more complex wordle implementation would solve this. If the whole world is guessing the same word, there will always be someone that tries to spoil it for others, just because they can.
        electroly 4y ago
        > Well... Aren't the twitter bots then the bad actor? Of course. But what does that matter? All you've done is assign blame. The person still had their game experience ruined. With a different design, that might not have been possible. This is like spam protection -- it's not Gmail's fault that you're receiving spam, but they're the ones in a position to stop it.
        shuntress 4y ago
        At a certain point, it becomes more efficient to consider it societies problem. If bad actors in person went door-to-door attempting to break in by picking locks, would you say that it is purely the responsibility of the homeowner to ensure that their locks are strong enough?
        electroly 4y ago
  - chme 4y ago
    But if that is the case, then that would not apply to the wordle archive, right? If the list of words for every day is encoded into a static code, why does the wordle archive need to crawl the site each day, or set the system time to different days, just to get the words for different days... Seems to be a bit over engineered to me...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- e12e 4y ago
  > Out of curiosity I had a look at the Wordle on the NYT site, and it's still the same script. Really? I had a feeling the game/wordlist changed somewhat after the move to nyt - I guessed they'd put some crossword cryptist on it... But I suppose I was wrong. Ed: AFAIK the js uses the client side date to pick a word - and today nyt and the ipfs mirror posted here does not share the same solution: https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html https://bafybeic4blel5vf4il73n3nzt6vw7npsov6or3cp3myjms4npiihxgjut4.ipfs.dweb.link/wordle/ https://bafybeic4blel5vf4il73n3nzt6vw7npsov6or3cp3myjms4npii...
  - NoahKAndrews 4y ago
    The wordlist did change. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/02/heres-how-the-new-york-times-changed-wordle/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/02/heres-how-the-new-yor...
    - e12e 4y ago
      Thank you. But that still indicates I was wrong - the possible solutions appear to be essentially the same - even if particularly different. I was surprised to see "slave" as an illegal guess. But it would appear that the difference in previous solution: stairs vs royal(I think ?) might just be slightly different word lists for the solutions... I thought there was much more of an edit.
      - tedmiston 4y ago
        They changed some obscure and offensive words initially, but there have been recent news articles around days where people had 2 different solutions to the same puzzle. Initially I suspected that this was NYT watching for how unusually difficult words play out and then changing the answer on the fly to be a simpler word. But I think in reality these were the same changes they made shortly after the acquisition and somehow people have the old JS file cached locally. https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/31/why-wordle-game-284-had-two-answers-and-how-to-fix/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/31/why-wordle-game-284-had-tw...
- chrisgp 4y ago
  The NYT removed a few words from the original list that were seen as more obscure, but otherwise it seems like they just copy-pasted the client-side code.

brian_herman 4y ago

Thank you for the insightful comment.

femto 4y ago

> ...update the JS each day with the new word Even more hands off than that. The script contained the entire list of words and each day it just moved to the next entry in the list. It makes sense, in that originating as a fun personal project the author wouldn't want to be burdened with a daily update task. Edit: Out of curiosity I had a look at the Wordle on the NYT site, and it's still the same script.

mattbuilds 4y ago
That’s a perfect example of solving for the problem you have and not over engineering.
- pdpi 4y ago
  It's also a perfect example of actually understanding the problem you're trying to solve (which is a prerequisite for not overengineering). Wordle is a tiny word puzzle game with no stakes. So, while this architecture makes it trivially easy to cheat, there's also zero reason to do so. You're just robbing yourself of the fun in order to... do what, exactly? Brag about it?
  - Hamuko 4y ago
    Unfortunately it also allows to rob other people of the fun, as there has been multiple Twitter bots spreading the future words. I think one even replied to people's Wordle score tweets.
    - WilTimSon 4y ago
      That's a good example of how just a few malicious knobs ruin the fun for everyone else. I suppose blocking those bots isn't difficult but the fact that someone went out of their way to code one is so sad.
    - chme 4y ago
      Well... Aren't the twitter bots then the bad actor? I wouldn't complain that wikipedia exists when I am answering a quiz... I don't think a more complex wordle implementation would solve this. If the whole world is guessing the same word, there will always be someone that tries to spoil it for others, just because they can.
      - electroly 4y ago
        > Well... Aren't the twitter bots then the bad actor? Of course. But what does that matter? All you've done is assign blame. The person still had their game experience ruined. With a different design, that might not have been possible. This is like spam protection -- it's not Gmail's fault that you're receiving spam, but they're the ones in a position to stop it.
        shuntress 4y ago
        At a certain point, it becomes more efficient to consider it societies problem. If bad actors in person went door-to-door attempting to break in by picking locks, would you say that it is purely the responsibility of the homeowner to ensure that their locks are strong enough?
        electroly 4y ago
- chme 4y ago
  But if that is the case, then that would not apply to the wordle archive, right? If the list of words for every day is encoded into a static code, why does the wordle archive need to crawl the site each day, or set the system time to different days, just to get the words for different days... Seems to be a bit over engineered to me...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
e12e 4y ago
> Out of curiosity I had a look at the Wordle on the NYT site, and it's still the same script. Really? I had a feeling the game/wordlist changed somewhat after the move to nyt - I guessed they'd put some crossword cryptist on it... But I suppose I was wrong. Ed: AFAIK the js uses the client side date to pick a word - and today nyt and the ipfs mirror posted here does not share the same solution: https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html https://bafybeic4blel5vf4il73n3nzt6vw7npsov6or3cp3myjms4npiihxgjut4.ipfs.dweb.link/wordle/ https://bafybeic4blel5vf4il73n3nzt6vw7npsov6or3cp3myjms4npii...
- NoahKAndrews 4y ago
  The wordlist did change. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/02/heres-how-the-new-york-times-changed-wordle/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/02/heres-how-the-new-yor...
  - e12e 4y ago
    Thank you. But that still indicates I was wrong - the possible solutions appear to be essentially the same - even if particularly different. I was surprised to see "slave" as an illegal guess. But it would appear that the difference in previous solution: stairs vs royal(I think ?) might just be slightly different word lists for the solutions... I thought there was much more of an edit.
    - tedmiston 4y ago
      They changed some obscure and offensive words initially, but there have been recent news articles around days where people had 2 different solutions to the same puzzle. Initially I suspected that this was NYT watching for how unusually difficult words play out and then changing the answer on the fly to be a simpler word. But I think in reality these were the same changes they made shortly after the acquisition and somehow people have the old JS file cached locally. https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/31/why-wordle-game-284-had-two-answers-and-how-to-fix/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/31/why-wordle-game-284-had-tw...
chrisgp 4y ago
The NYT removed a few words from the original list that were seen as more obscure, but otherwise it seems like they just copy-pasted the client-side code.