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Show HN: Can you lose at Wordle if you tried?

dontwordle.com

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Re: Show HN: Can you lose at Wordle if you tried?

#21

Post by zwieback »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #17
andrewflnr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, very silly to deliberately choose the mode that makes those words nigh impossible to guess, and then blame the word choice. If you want to make the game harder, try to bring down your guess count.

Meh, on normal mode it resolves down to can you solve a 5-letter anagram with placement clues. I pick a new starting word each day (definitely sub-optimal) and play hard mode. To each their own.

That's me, sometimes it takes me many minutes to pick a starting word I haven't used yet, usually I look around the room until I spot something with five letters.

Re: Show HN: Can you lose at Wordle if you tried?

#23

Post by NikolaNovak »

ar_lan wrote: post #2

Absolutely - when they choose ridiculous words like "PATCH". WATCH HATCH BATCH CATCH LATCH MATCH There, I made 6 near-perfect guesses that would have cost me the game if I started with any one of them. This is so infuriating. I've lost I think 3 times already because of this type of word choice. Note : This is only relevant if you play on the hard-mode, which enforces you re-use guessed letters that have already been…

While I agree with the spirit of your message, I feel you're addressing the title without actually having clicked it ;)

Re: Show HN: Can you lose at Wordle if you tried?

#24

Post by mimimi31 »

andrewflnr wrote: post #7
function_seven wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh those are the worst. There should be a term for that early success curse when playing it on Hard Mode. Getting a bunch of greens right off the bat can be a kiss of death.

I've heard "canyon of doom".

I like it. I wonder if you could calculate how evil a solution would be in that regard, i.e. how likely you are to end up in a canyon. Maybe you could count how many substrings also occur in other valid words or something.

Re: Show HN: Can you lose at Wordle if you tried?

#25

Post by Waterluvian »

ethbr0 wrote: post #9

The essence of any wildly popular single-player game = hard to win quickly + very hard to lose.

Yeah! That reminds me of something a game dev once taught me about single player games. (paraphrasing) "Almost all AAA titles are impossible _not_ to finish in a reasonable time. The entire challenge of balancing a single player game is to hide all the ways the game holds your hand, while making the player feel responsible for all the times you win."

Re: Show HN: Can you lose at Wordle if you tried?

#26

Post by function_seven »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #17
andrewflnr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, very silly to deliberately choose the mode that makes those words nigh impossible to guess, and then blame the word choice. If you want to make the game harder, try to bring down your guess count.

Meh, on normal mode it resolves down to can you solve a 5-letter anagram with placement clues. I pick a new starting word each day (definitely sub-optimal) and play hard mode. To each their own.

I started one a few days ago with DIVVY.

I was in the mood for either a crazy 1-guess win or a longer road otherwise.

Game gets lame if you’re always using “statistically engineered” guesses.

Re: Show HN: Can you lose at Wordle if you tried?

#28

Post by ghaff »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #17
andrewflnr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, very silly to deliberately choose the mode that makes those words nigh impossible to guess, and then blame the word choice. If you want to make the game harder, try to bring down your guess count.

Meh, on normal mode it resolves down to can you solve a 5-letter anagram with placement clues. I pick a new starting word each day (definitely sub-optimal) and play hard mode. To each their own.

I usually do a two word opening sequence and go on from that in normal mode. Seems a reasonable compromise.

I actually tired of the multiword Wordle "clones" for the reason that you say. I found you pretty much had to do a 3 or 4 word opening sequence and then mostly solve anagrams. Otherwise you end up wasting too many guesses trying to solve one word that has a lot of options.

Re: Show HN: Can you lose at Wordle if you tried?

#30

Post by ghaff »

sateesh wrote: post #13
ar_lan wrote: post #2

Absolutely - when they choose ridiculous words like "PATCH". WATCH HATCH BATCH CATCH LATCH MATCH There, I made 6 near-perfect guesses that would have cost me the game if I started with any one of them. This is so infuriating. I've lost I think 3 times already because of this type of word choice. Note : This is only relevant if you play on the hard-mode, which enforces you re-use guessed letters that have already been…

Along with these ones that are hard for me to get right are when the letters are repeated.

Repeated letters are one of the things that tend to get me. Others are:

- Uncommon letters (I tend to mentally skip over them because they're uncommon.)

- Words that differ from the "usual" pronunciation for a pattern, like having a glottal stop. When I'm pronouncing some pattern mentally in the usual way I can end up skipping past a valid word because I'm mentally pronouncing it wrong.

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