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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

#111

Post by romellem »

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.

The creator added this specifically to add some “juice,” a phrase from the talk [Juice It or Lose It][1], where they describe it as meaning:

> A juicy game feels alive and responds to everything you do, tons of cascading action and response for minimal user input.

He talked about this as the end of a [podcast][2] he was recently the guest on, Syntax

[1]: https://youtu.be/Fy0aCDmgnxg

[2]: https://syntax.fm/show/430/creator-of-wordle-josh-wardle

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#112

Post by danachow »

alskdjflaskjdhf wrote: post #108
GCA10 wrote: post #106

One more factor in Wordle's popularity that I haven't yet seen commentators identify much. The game's word roster tilts heavily toward words with neutral or cheerful connotations. So your brain conjures up something happy at the end. You don't slog through the puzzle solving to end up with VIRUS, ENNUI, GRIEF, SLAVE, INANE or other such morose words. Instead, we get the likes of AWAKE, BLUSH, FOCAL, etc. That helps m…

>One more factor in Wordle's popularity that I haven't yet seen commentators identify much. The game's word roster tilts heavily toward words with neutral or cheerful connotations. >So your brain conjures up something happy at the end. You don't slog through the puzzle solving to end up with VIRUS, ENNUI, GRIEF, SLAVE, INANE or other such morose words. Ironically, SLAVE was actually one of the future solution words i…

They removed it from the master dictionary as well.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#113

Post by jbmny »

mecha_ghidorah wrote: post #97
nemo44x wrote: post #16

Fun game but becomes fairly automatic when you know the best words to start with.

I pick a different start word each day to help keep it fresh I have a friend who always users yesterdays word as their first guess

That feels like yet another aspect of Wordle's appeal to me: the fact that it starts with a "clean slate", where you can enter any word you want. It's an opportunity for creativity, spontaneity, and serendipity. One of my favorite parts of the game is pulling that first word out of the air.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#114

Post by pcmoney »

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!

“Monetize”

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#115

Post by frutiger »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #78
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…

When I first discovered Wordle, I immediately looked for a way to keep playing with new random words, something that most clones have implemented. After a few rounds, it just wasn't as fun. What makes it fun to spend 10 minutes on the game is that it's the only round of the day so there's a pay-off to giving it some thought. When you can keep playing new rounds, it's just not rewarding and I would just close the tab…

> Had I invented Wordle, I would never have thought of just one, shared round per day

This is the core mechanic of a newspaper crossword (or the NYT Spelling Bee) which inspired Wordle. It’s really no surprise when you think of it that way.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#116

Post by dralley »

ehsankia wrote: post #89
hombre_fatal wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first discovered Wordle, I immediately looked for a way to keep playing with new random words, something that most clones have implemented. After a few rounds, it just wasn't as fun. What makes it fun to spend 10 minutes on the game is that it's the only round of the day so there's a pay-off to giving it some thought. When you can keep playing new rounds, it's just not rewarding and I would just close the tab…

> After a few rounds, it just wasn't as fun. Absolutely. If that limitation wasn't there, the game would've definitely fizzled out within days and maybe even never made to it the popularity it has now. The slow sustained popularity, with people posting their results on the shared daily word is the key to success here. It's the only reason people are still talking about it more than a month later.

This is also why I strongly prefer the HBO release model to the Netflix model.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#117

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

prawn wrote: post #107
hombre_fatal wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first discovered Wordle, I immediately looked for a way to keep playing with new random words, something that most clones have implemented. After a few rounds, it just wasn't as fun. What makes it fun to spend 10 minutes on the game is that it's the only round of the day so there's a pay-off to giving it some thought. When you can keep playing new rounds, it's just not rewarding and I would just close the tab…

I have been playing Quordle as well, and now find Wordle very slow and dull. I'll persist as long as my streak is active (60+ or whatever) but bail if it breaks. I play 10-20 games of Quordle a day and find it more interesting, challenging with IMO more difficult words, etc. But I can appreciate that one shared round was key to Wordle being noticed.

+1 quordle making wordle seem dull.

But I only place the official once a day. I suck at it I think, but they do a great job of making it rewarding.

Also their continuous improvement on the front end is a daily side game, to see what they changed today.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#120

Post by robbiep »

Effectively there are 2 wordles at the moment - the my times link has a different word and I was using the old uk link and so my partner and I are having different words. Pretty funny/an opportunity to do the ‘crossword’ twice a day! (For however long they keep it up!)
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