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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

#201

Post by Vepkhvi »

smoldesu wrote: post #82
marricks wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an even better personal success than Wordle, or at least different. It was a man's labor of love for years, which tied together all his interests: music, art, programming, games. And better yet he built a career out of doing all of those things and still owns and maintains it years later. Presumably still loves it too.

A lot of breakout successes follow that formula. While I'm not particularly fond of his work, I have nothing but respect for Toby Fox and the years of work he put into bringing his dream to reality.

Toby Fox made undertale, not Stardew. But it’s definitely in the same vein of “labor of love!”

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#202

Post by CamelCaseName »

wolframhempel wrote: post #199

Not directly related to the article, but I was just wondering what the best word to start wordle with is - and I think it is ATONE. I arrived there by looking at the most frequent letters in english from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency and putting them into an anagram solver at https://www.thewordfinder.com/anagram-solver/ There is no five letter word from ETAOI (the five most frequent letters) but the…

Recently I watched two videos on how to solve Wordle using information theory by ThreeBlues1Brown

https://youtu.be/v68zYyaEmEA

https://youtu.be/fRed0Xmc2Wg

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#203

Post by dubbel »

wolframhempel wrote: post #199

Not directly related to the article, but I was just wondering what the best word to start wordle with is - and I think it is ATONE. I arrived there by looking at the most frequent letters in english from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency and putting them into an anagram solver at https://www.thewordfinder.com/anagram-solver/ There is no five letter word from ETAOI (the five most frequent letters) but the…

ATONE is a good one based on letter frequency - I wonder if letter position might lead you to another word, for example one that ends with "ed", "er" or "es". Or has an "e" as the second to last character?

Edit: I just read in a comment, plural or past tense words seem to be less common in the Wordle word set, so my example wouldn't make as much sense.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#204

Post by shawabawa3 »

jdrc wrote: post #150

> but not in an annoying way like Farmville Facebook notifications. Shared Wordle games actively improve your experience by adding a social factor. It's no different than any other social games. It's still novel, so people don't call it annoying ... yet I like the idea of sharing everywhere with a picture or emojis, because it means the game has no archive or hall of fame, which means users are incentivized to store…

It is different because it doesn't link to anything, doesn't have a call to action, no "free gems!" etc

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#206

Post by shawabawa3 »

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.

Unless you're playing on hard mode you can do a known wrong guess to eliminate more potential letters

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#207

Post by neoberg »

the_af wrote: post #200
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…

I think the full list of words being hardcoded and readily available is not a kind of elegant simplicity, but simply an inelegant compromise to get everything done client-side, which has obvious benefits. It's the one thing I would change about Wordle's implementation.

Why tho? Cheating just takes away from the cheater's experience and doesn't affect anyone else. It's pretty much like any physical game. You can play (or cheat) it any way you like even though the game is designed to be played in a certain way.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#208

Post by friendzis »

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…

> 3. The answer word list does not appear to have a lot of plurals or common vowel endings for past tense, etc. Or obscure words.

I guess it depends on one's vocabulary, but for non-native speaker it sure does have some obscure words and more importantly technical terms. For example TRUSS. While not exactly an "obscure" word, unless one has familiarity with technical construction terminology non-native speaker most probably is not familiar with such a word. It is just not a word one would expect to appear in a fiction book, film or casual conversation.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#209

Post by unfocussed_mike »

zem wrote: post #133
prawn wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

quordle seems to be the ideal number of boards, 8 and 16 get too easy because most of the letters show up somewhere and you get into the mopping up phase pretty soon.

Agreed -- sedecordle seems to have far less risk-of-not-succeeding peril than quordle.

Re: Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways

#210

Post by overlordalex »

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…

> And then the biggest mistake

Some might say the biggest mistake is not playing on hard mode ;)

> Hard Mode > Any revealed hints must be used in subsequent guesses

I prefer hardmode as it prevents the sort of elimination strategies, and it feels more like a strategic game. However it does come back to bite you if you get 4 letters early on for a combination that has a lot of possible answers.

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