Live data from Hacker News

Primel – guess a 5 digit prime number – each guess must be a prime

converged.yt

91–100 of 139 posts

Re: Primel – guess a 5 digit prime number – each guess must be a prime

#91
post #85

My side-project this week has been searching for an optimal Wordle strategy. I figured it would make a great blog post but I haven't got that far yet. Step 1 is to find an optimal starting word. My most insightful finding so far has came from trying to define a cost function for comparing potential starting words. It turns out that "% of potential guesses [not] eliminated" is an excellent loss function. Importantly,…

Since you've been looking into it, how are words with multiple of the same letters treated on Wordle. If there are two (or three) 'E' in the solution or the guess?

I've spent some time analyzing Wordle (my starting words are SOARE and then BUILT, unless I've already got strong clues from SOARE).

If the answer has one E and you guess a word with two Es, only one of the Es will be marked correct (green/yellow). If one of the Es is in the correct place, it will be green and the other one grey. Otherwise the first E will be yellow and the second grey. So if the answer has fewer Es than your guess the game tells you.

If the answer has more Es than your guess there is no indication of this.

Re: Primel – guess a 5 digit prime number – each guess must be a prime

#93
post #84

This reminds me of something about flash games in the 2000s. I was in high school at the time and every morning in class I would check onemorelevel, kongregate, etc for new games. There was a pattern in flash games where someone would make a great simple game with an interesting, novel, or long-forgotten mechanic. It would get to the frontpage of all these sites, and a few months later you'd see that mechanic mixed w…

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn.” https://www.benshoemate.com/2012/08/02/what-does-it-mean-goo...

Re: Primel – guess a 5 digit prime number – each guess must be a prime

#94
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I intuited a probably-inaccurate trick with exponentially raising a small prime (e.g 7*7*7etc), doubling the multiple (*2), and subtracting 1 (to get an odd number). That got me two substantially-different primes and narrowed my numbers a lot, which then became guesswork. My guesses in the end: -?--- ?---! ?-??! ?!??! !!!!!

The number you come up with in that way is at least guaranteed to not be divisible by 2 or 7. Obviously that doesn't mean it's prime but it definitely helps your odds.

Also usefully, (2(a+1)^n-1) % a = (2a(a+1)^(n-1) + 2(a+1)^(n-1) - 1) % a = 1. So if you choose one of the 3k+1 primes, it's also guaranteed not divisible by 3.

Re: Primel – guess a 5 digit prime number – each guess must be a prime

#95
post #92

The repo linked in the game seems to lead to a general Wordle clone. I’m guessing you forked it and replaced the keyboard with numbers and the word checker with a prime number checker?

That's a lot more work than just populating with a list of eligible primes

Re: Primel – guess a 5 digit prime number – each guess must be a prime

#96

Crowdsourcing decryption on the web is so crazy... it just might work. Now come up with a hash that starts with many zeroes.

There should be an option to use the "numbers" that are prime in a different universe.

what would that be?

Re: Primel – guess a 5 digit prime number – each guess must be a prime

#97

My side-project this week has been searching for an optimal Wordle strategy. I figured it would make a great blog post but I haven't got that far yet. Step 1 is to find an optimal starting word. My most insightful finding so far has came from trying to define a cost function for comparing potential starting words. It turns out that "% of potential guesses [not] eliminated" is an excellent loss function. Importantly,…

My first two guesses are usually AUDIO and RENTS if it helps ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Primel – guess a 5 digit prime number – each guess must be a prime

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

log(100000) is 5, so approximately 1 in 5 numbers below 100k is prime. Obviously those in the range 10000-99999 are less dense, but primes are still surprisingly common.

You want a natural log there; ln(100000) ~ 11.5. That being said, the pool you're really working from is the numbers with last digit 1, 3, 7, or 9. One out of every 4.6 such numbers under 10^5 is prime. So just guessing until you find a prime is practical.

And you can knock out multiples of 3 by adding digits.
Post reply on HN