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Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

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Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#41

Post by duskwuff »

function_seven wrote: post #31
ghaff wrote: post #17

I actually think the OP and the comments are too focused on the programmer-related aspects of this. I'll add a few things. 1. It's not trivial but it's not that hard if you have a decent vocabulary and some intuitive sense for word frequencies (and word pair frequencies) for different locations in a word. The answer list does not seem to include really hard words as naively picking all the words in the MW dictionary…

> 4. It lends itself to what I'll casual cheating, i.e. there are easy ways to get some hints without giving the answers away while focusing on a strategy. I like this part. I’m in a 5-person group text where we’re posting our scores every day. Sometimes I’m the first, oftentimes not. When I happen to see a couple of others’ results in the thread, I’ll start to think about what they would have guessed with whatever p…

Along those lines, here's a data analysis pipeline someone put together to guess the current Wordle word based solely on the patterns of guesses in tweets:

https://www.kaggle.com/benhamner/wordle-1-6

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#42

Post by harry-wood »

egypturnash wrote: post #8

> It also brings players back into the game, but not in an annoying way like Farmville Facebook notifications. As someone who doesn't play, it's getting more and more annoying. Especially now that there's stuff like Wordle Except It's Four Games At Once demanding space on my social timelines.

Yeah "not in an annoying way" is certainly debatable. Personally I'm not annoyed by it, but I can see why people would be. Whoever made this spoiler bot seemed pretty annoyed by it :-) https://twitter.com/dancow/status/1485660308622528513

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#43

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

dvirsky wrote: post #19

The code design is also very elegant in its simplicity. You have two static lists of words in the JS code - known words, and a smaller, random pre-shuffled list of words the game will select from. The selection is done on the client, by date, from the second list - every day at midnight (your local time!) the next word in the pre-shuffled list is selected - no hashing or randomizing or anything. No cookies are involv…

Making the whole thing client side also let him scale from a small handful of users to literally millions with basically zero additional work.

I hope it inspires future devs to let go of feeling like they absolutely need to beg or require users to create accounts to capture email addresses just so they have a chance at monetizing their thing. Wordle may not have ever caught on if it were preemptively over-engineered: it could've added friction to the onboarding, the site could crash, etc.

You can just build a great MVP and let it loose into the world, then see what happens.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#44

Post by [deleted] »

moskie wrote: post #13

I've also begun to thing of Wordle as a meme. I know virtually anything could be framed as a meme, but there's specific aspects of Wordle and its rise in popularity that make it a particularly apt description. Its viral spread was fast and resonant. It's super easy to consume. Think pieces dissecting it end up in mainstream publications. The story about its origin gets mythologized. And, most importantly: unending ri…

[deleted]

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#45

Post by paulcole »

sings wrote: post #38
paulcole wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played pretty high level Scrabble for a few years and most people who connect deeply with Scrabble are programmers, mathematicians, musicians, scientists, accountants, etc. Hardly anybody at the medium-to-high levels of play are word people. At its core, Scrabble is just a game of probability, memory, spatial awareness, and pattern recognition. The words could be random collections of symbols.

My dream version of Scrabble would have a score system somehow based on word infrequency, so more interesting words would gain higher scores, exactly to mitigate the phenomenon you describe here.

It’s a fun thought but how do you define infrequency and what is an interesting word?

ANESTRI is a very uncommon word by most “normal” measures (it’s the plural of anestrus, a period of sexual dormancy) but it’s (among) the most likely (by probability) 7-letter word played in tournament Scrabble games — there’s something like 9 anagrams of ANESTRI.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#46

Post by jrochkind1 »

I'm surprised how infrequently I see anyone commenting on the wordle tile-flipping animation.

It's... really nice? I like to watch it. I suspect I'm not alone, and if the tiles simply changed color in an instant without animation, wordle would not be as successful.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#47

Post by krallja »

paulcole wrote: post #28
ghaff wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually sort of a "word" person. I've written books for publishers and do a fair bit of writing for my job. But crosswords have always fallen into the too much work category for me and I've never really connected to word games in general (including Scrabble). But, yeah, I like Wordle and it hits a sweet spot for me.

I played pretty high level Scrabble for a few years and most people who connect deeply with Scrabble are programmers, mathematicians, musicians, scientists, accountants, etc. Hardly anybody at the medium-to-high levels of play are word people. At its core, Scrabble is just a game of probability, memory, spatial awareness, and pattern recognition. The words could be random collections of symbols.

Yep, in fact in 2015 Nigel Richards won the French Scrabble World Championship without speaking any French.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#48

Post by harry-wood »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #20
ghaff wrote: post #17

I actually think the OP and the comments are too focused on the programmer-related aspects of this. I'll add a few things. 1. It's not trivial but it's not that hard if you have a decent vocabulary and some intuitive sense for word frequencies (and word pair frequencies) for different locations in a word. The answer list does not seem to include really hard words as naively picking all the words in the MW dictionary…

#1 is why it's so successful. It's just challenging enough to make you think, but still solvable by most people. So we all get that nice dopamine rush of solving a puzzle with a reasonable perceived effort. How many people don't play the NYT Sunday Crossword b/c they never get more than a few words? There is a very devoted fan base for crossword, but it's not as universal as Wordl's adoption. To me, that's the genius…

"reasonable perceived effort" or maybe "reasonable perceived smarts". I think wordle fools us into thinking we're smart. Even though on some level we know it cannot take genius, it _feels_ like we've done something really clever, against the odds, when when we whittle down the possibilities to one word after just few guesses. It's counter-intuitive how quickly we solve it. Reminds me of the birthday paradox.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#50

Post by lanewinfield »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #46

I'm surprised how infrequently I see anyone commenting on the wordle tile-flipping animation. It's... really nice? I like to watch it. I suspect I'm not alone, and if the tiles simply changed color in an instant without animation, wordle would not be as successful.

Agreed. And the feeling of suspense and subsequent satisfaction when they slowly flip all to green is a dopamine hit in and of itself.
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