Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

Post by qq66 » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 10:50 AM UTC

suzzer99 wrote: post #148

dionidium wrote: post #124

In addition to everything else already discussed — the game is really well done, the sharing feature is inspired, the animations are delightful, etc — the thing about Wordle that makes it so universally popular is that it’s a very easy game that is experientially difficult. You have 6 guesses of 5 letters. There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet. Anyone in the top few deciles of verbal ability should hardly…

I've lost when I got into a situation with three green letters, no yellow letters, and a ton of valid words remaining with the other 2 slots. Can happen with one open slot too.

Post by mango7283 » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 11:00 AM UTC

EdwardDiego wrote: post #145

ehsankia wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wordlist definitely isn't perfect, and obviously each person has their own vocabulary, but it still is a key. It's something the creator mentions, if on your first play you run into a stupid word, you probably won't come back the next day. And the fact that the current word list is 1/th the total word count goes to show how many words are ridiculous. AFAIK his partner actually sifted through all 13k word list and…

That's interesting, I suspect a lot of Wordle's success derives from their curation of words to remove things like "abaft" and "imago". But then I see the NYT went and removed words like "caulk" and "agora" because they were "obscure", and I feel better about humph.

Post by kzrdude » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 11:09 AM UTC

dralley wrote: post #116

ehsankia wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Post by mango7283 » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 11:14 AM UTC

EdwardDiego wrote: post #181

ollifi wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

caulk was the word last week though? Nobody I play the game with knew that word. Granted we are not native english speakers. Too hard word every now and then is also unifying experience when everybody stops hating the player and instead hates the game.

Fair point. Caulk might also be more of a British English word than American English word.

Post by throw3434053 » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 11:27 AM UTC

lgas wrote: post #167

okonomiyaki3000 wrote: post #166

I may be completely wrong but, after playing 3 or 4 times, I got the feeling that this game is very easy and involves more luck than skill or strategy. It looks and feels like a puzzle so you get the feeling of having solved something but have you, really? If you find the word in 3 tries 90% of the time, does it mean you're actually better at the game than someone who usually needs 4 or 5 attempts? Or are you just a…

Over a small sample size it's impossible to say, but if you maintain those numbers after many games then yes, you are better. And there are a lot of opportunities for skill or strategy. For example the choice of your first word matters a lot, should you plane something like ADIEU to get most of the vowels, or should you plane something like CRANE that has a lot of the popular consonants? And then the biggest mistake…