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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

#51

Post by cdubzzz »

afavour wrote: post #18
cdubzzz wrote: post #3

I'm a huge fan of the plain text share functionality that Wordle uses (introduced?). Loving it in the various clones that are coming out as well and I hope it becomes a common "simple share" approach in other applications.

One of my favourite features of Wordle is that the share functionality uses the Web Share API. It’s been available cross platform for a while now but this is the first truly huge use I’ve seen and I think a lot of the games success is because of it.

Oh, cool! I did not realize that. Will have to take a closer look at it…

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#52

Post by paulcole »

krallja wrote: post #47
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.

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

There’s a bunch of Thai guys who crush at North American English Scrabble.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#53

Post by zanecodes »

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…

Another cool instance of this was 2048, when it first came out. I was in college at the time, and for at least a month you could see a half dozen or more games of 2048 on the screens of any given classroom's laptops.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#55

Post by TeaVMFan »

twobitshifter wrote: post #29
TeaVMFan wrote: post #15

Having implemented my own 5-letter word game, I can agree that much finesse lies under the covers. Wordii is for the impatient, letting you play more often if you choose: https://frequal.com/wordii/ The many subtleties of this genre make it a great programming challenge. I encourage developers to try making their own version. I think you'll come away with a healthy respect for Mr. Wardle.

I have a reasonable vocabulary but I just got the word “copra”. I did get it on the sixth try but only after guessing cobra and realizing there were no letters left that produced words I knew. According to Wikipedia “Copra is the dried coconut kernels of which coconut oil is expelled.” It might be a blind spot in my vocabulary but I haven’t had this happen with wordle. The accessible word list could be considered ano…

Yes, designing a dictionary that is both challenging and reasonable is another challenge for games like this. I made a pass through the dictionary after earlier HN feedback, adding some words for guessing and removing some more obscure words. I'll make another pass.

Thanks for the feedback!

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#56

Post by TeaVMFan »

phenylene wrote: post #23
TeaVMFan wrote: post #15

Having implemented my own 5-letter word game, I can agree that much finesse lies under the covers. Wordii is for the impatient, letting you play more often if you choose: https://frequal.com/wordii/ The many subtleties of this genre make it a great programming challenge. I encourage developers to try making their own version. I think you'll come away with a healthy respect for Mr. Wardle.

Nice work! Dark mode?

That will be a fun addition. Especially since Wordii is designed for longer play, that makes sense. Expect to see it soon. Thanks!

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#57

Post by yen223 »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #43
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:…

I wish I were smart enough to coin a catchy phrase that means "the moment some software dropped in quality, when they decided to add user accounts", because I see this quite a lot.

I'm looking at you, Postman!

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#58

Post by sings »

paulcole wrote: post #45
sings wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes it’s certainly not a trivial problem. Assuming the requirement for a digital component in order to compute word scores, perhaps frequency could be weighted by previous (competition?) word plays.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#59

Post by taeric »

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.

My favorite thing in this is that it is easily recreated with about fifteen lines of css. Truly a very well crafted animation that fully builds on the joy of seeing the reveal.

Edit: realized my point seems reductionist. I meant that to be that it is not just a technical marvel. The artistic choices that went into building it are truly impressive.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#60

Post by dvirsky »

yen223 wrote: post #57
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

I wish I were smart enough to coin a catchy phrase that means "the moment some software dropped in quality, when they decided to add user accounts", because I see this quite a lot. I'm looking at you, Postman!

I'm old enough to remember when Google didn't have user accounts.
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