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Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations

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Re: Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations

#131

Post by tibbar »

nneonneo wrote: post #107
tibbar wrote: post #17

I made a solver for this and did some comparison with Wordle: https://jacobbrazeal.wordpress.com/2022/02/07/solving-nerdle... . TL;DR even though there's an order of magnitude more possible words, you can solve it in fewer average guesses than Wordle pretty consistently.

You note that the interface accepts a lot more words than are in the dictionary, much like the normal Wordle game. I wonder if you can exploit the full set of acceptable words to narrow down the possibility space even further? I would not be surprised if there's an equation in the full set that performs better than the equation you initially selected.

It’s definitely possible. An exhaustive search would require tapping into the cloud since there are well over 100,000 words that the interface could use, times 17,000 target words, times the grading operation which is moderately expensive. My guess, though, is that the best starter word is number-dense since numbers show up in the middle of the frequency range, and therefore probably wouldn’t change. However, subsequent guesses would very likely benefit from the broader dictionary.

Re: Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations

#132

Post by pimlottc »

This is fun but the different colors (or rather, lack of color) are way too subtle for me. It takes me conscious effort to distinguish "correct-character-wrong-position" from "correct-character-correct-position".

It probably also doesn't help that I'm seeing also seeing tons of phantom dots from the grid illusion [0]...

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_illusion

Re: Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations

#133

Post by PebblesRox »

scatters wrote: post #99
hvdijk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all fun until you get something like FIGHT where the last four letters are right and have to just guess from LIGHT, MIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT, TIGHT, WIGHT, anything I might have missed, and there's no way to use any strategy and you just have to randomly guess and hope you guess right.

You can guess WARMS, which will either give you the answer (to input on the next try) or eliminate 4 of the possibilities, leaving only 2 to guess. That's a best case of 2 additional guesses and worst case of 3 (expectation of 2 1/3) which is better than your strategy, which has a best case of 1, worst case 6, expectation 3 1/2.

That's true for regular mode, but WARMS would be an invalid guess in hard mode once the last four letters have been established as IGHT.

Re: Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations

#134

Post by piggybox »

somethingAlex wrote: post #58
lalaland1125 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is making guesses that you know are incorrect to rule out multiple digits at once.

What do you mean by incorrect? The equation has to be valid, according to the rules. At some point I ended up with 2 + + 8 = 1 where x = y because of math. I had 5 guesses left and 8 possibilities. That's just gambling without the money at that point.

Then you try to use those 8 possibilities (if not all) in the next round to eliminate some or most of them to quickly narrow down the scope of guessing

Re: Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations

#135

Post by bee_rider »

ilikepi wrote: post #52
lalaland1125 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is to rule out as many digits as possible using guesses that you know are wrong. 9 + 4 + 7 = 20 for example is a more efficient guess than naively trying to guess each pair. And there are even better guesses if you just use digits.

Yeah, and as with Wordle, I think there is some strategy that can be employed in the first couple guesses to aggressively eliminate digits and operators. Currently I use 3 * 5 + 2 = 17 as my first guess in order to try all the prime digits, 1, and the "easier" operators. There are probably better options though...

Interesting. I like "sum of two double digit numbers = double digit number." In Wordle I usually hunt for vowels, which I guess the equivalent thing here would be hunting for operators. But somehow it feels like knocking out digits is more useful here -- I guess because of the increased chance of repetition.

Re: Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations

#137

Post by bee_rider »

hvdijk wrote: post #94
wartijn_ wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should give hard mode a try. That makes it a lot less repetitive and more fun.

It's all fun until you get something like FIGHT where the last four letters are right and have to just guess from LIGHT, MIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT, TIGHT, WIGHT, anything I might have missed, and there's no way to use any strategy and you just have to randomly guess and hope you guess right.

This situation is technically possible, but I'd be surprised to already have 4/5 letters, and not have already tested R, S, L, or N (N from NIGHT). There are all one point scrabble letters after all. I could see myself needing to roll the dice on MIGHT, TIGHT, WIGHT.

Re: Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations

#138

Post by tasuki »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #123
billforsternz wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer the numbers round in Countdown as well, but much (much, much) prefer Wordle to Nerdle. Nerdle is an attempt to make a Wordle for numbers, but to me it just doesn't work. Today I quickly got 2+?+8=1?. Clearly ? can be any digit from 0 to 9. I had four tries left so a 40% chance of winning with no skill involved (I lost incidentally).

That situation is exactly what my first paragraph was about. > As others have said, you can (and often should) make guesses that don't satisfy all the clues you've found so far. That way you can find / eliminate symbols much more quickly.

Just fyi, that paragraph is clear and unambiguous. Ironic that billforsternz chose to post his concerns in response to a comment which had addressed them.

Re: Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations

#139

Post by gcanyon »

pierrebai wrote: post #74
tibbar wrote: post #17

I made a solver for this and did some comparison with Wordle: https://jacobbrazeal.wordpress.com/2022/02/07/solving-nerdle... . TL;DR even though there's an order of magnitude more possible words, you can solve it in fewer average guesses than Wordle pretty consistently.

That's because there are fewer letters. In wordle, ignoring the fact that the word need to exists, you could make 5 guesses with 5 new letters each time and still not quite exhausting the letter space. With the math one, in two guesses you can figure out the digits. Also, I play wordle in the hardest mode, which forces you to always reuse known letters, which makes it a lot harder. (I also playu in a clone with an ex…

Deduce https://apps.apple.com/us/app/deduce/id351558195 is not a wordle clone (it's been around over ten years), and is much harder than wordle. It is iOS only and costs $3.

Re: Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations

#140

Post by delaaxe »

dankwizard wrote: post #124
pierrebai wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because there are fewer letters. In wordle, ignoring the fact that the word need to exists, you could make 5 guesses with 5 new letters each time and still not quite exhausting the letter space. With the math one, in two guesses you can figure out the digits. Also, I play wordle in the hardest mode, which forces you to always reuse known letters, which makes it a lot harder. (I also playu in a clone with an ex…

weird flex but ok

this is not reddit
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