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Wordle Is a Love Story

nytimes.com

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Re: Wordle Is a Love Story

#71

Post by Syzygies »

lalaithion wrote: post #42
iams wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on your word list, are you using the same word list as wordle?

I do not. According to the original article, Wordle uses[1] 2,500 common words out of the 12,000 5-letter words in the english language[2]. I use the 5 letter words in the collins scrabble dictionary (which is about 12,000 words). The assumption you need to make for my analysis to be correct is that the letter patterns in the 2,500 possible answers is statistically similar to the distribution of letter patterns in th…

Read the JavaScript? It contains both lists. Training on the wrong dictionary, tomorrow you might find yourself in a slump.

Re: Wordle Is a Love Story

#72

Post by Kiro »

d--b wrote: post #53

The game's great but I'm puzzled why no one mentions that this is a verbatim copy of Lingo, a 1987 tv show that's been adapted in many countries. I used to watch this in France where it was very successful. Once people got too good at 5-letter words, they ran 6, then 7, and finally 8 letters.

It's obviously very standard (and has been done a million times before and after Lingo... probably as long as language has existed) but it's all about the execution here.

Re: Wordle Is a Love Story

#73

Post by kelseyfrog »

serverholic wrote: post #57
paxys wrote: post #16

- Fun - Simple - One puzzle a day, and everyone plays the same one so you can share and compare scores - No account creation, logins, ads, subscriptions, data mining All the right ingredients for going viral. I just hope the last point stays unchanged.

I feel bad that he isn't making a dime from this. I think people should be able to get something in return for creating value for others.

Maybe they enjoy non-monetary rewards? One of the joys of the internet for me is experiencing peoples' self-less creations. More of that please!

Re: Wordle Is a Love Story

#74

Post by kelseyfrog »

xPaw wrote: post #70
lalaithion wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not. According to the original article, Wordle uses[1] 2,500 common words out of the 12,000 5-letter words in the english language[2]. I use the 5 letter words in the collins scrabble dictionary (which is about 12,000 words). The assumption you need to make for my analysis to be correct is that the letter patterns in the 2,500 possible answers is statistically similar to the distribution of letter patterns in th…

The word list is in Wordle code, so you can just grab that.

The answers are also in the code which opens the door to speedruns.

Re: Wordle Is a Love Story

#75

Post by periodontal »

lalaithion wrote: post #40
iams wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the first word you aren't necessarily trying to get the most number of matches. You are trying to use the word that once you get the match result back, it discards the most number of words. These two are not the same thing.

Yes, as you'll see in the readme that I have numbers for both approaches. The first section is the average number of remaining words after getting the match result back, and the second section is the average number of yellow and green squares.

You might also try maximum instead of average. This is minimax and represents worst case scenarios for each guess.

This is mostly useful for optimal play against an opponent (which is not the case here). Imagine an adversarial version where the opponent doesn't have to commit to a word at the beginning but must reveal one matching all clues if you can't get it in 6 guesses (basically, they can change their word when you guess and you are trying to make that impossible).

Re: Wordle Is a Love Story

#76

Post by detritus »

wenc wrote: post #4

What’s your optimal 5-letter starting word? Mine is HOUSE. It has 3 vowels (including E which is the most frequent in the English language) and S which helps test for plurals.

Mine was ouija, but house is a lot smarter, d'oh!

Re: Wordle Is a Love Story

#77

Post by detritus »

slg wrote: post #8

I tried this game the last couple of days and I don't get the appeal. There is some skill involved, but there is also a huge amount of luck. For example yesterday I had "ti_er". I guessed "timer" but the actual word was "tiger". That left me with a score of 5 instead of 4. Does that say anything about my skill level as a player? Honestly, this seems to mostly be a marketing success story about the sharing score funct…

I attempt to get at the fourth try. Before that is luck, after that is guesswork I like to believe that four is the skill sweet spot.

Re: Wordle Is a Love Story

#78

Post by harscoat »

paxys wrote: post #16

- Fun - Simple - One puzzle a day, and everyone plays the same one so you can share and compare scores - No account creation, logins, ads, subscriptions, data mining All the right ingredients for going viral. I just hope the last point stays unchanged.

- enriching for non native speaker. (Not so easy to come up with 5 letter correct words.)

Re: Wordle Is a Love Story

#79

Post by Vinnl »

hencq wrote: post #52

LOL, this sounds exactly like the Dutch tv game show 'Lingo' that's been on tv since 1989. Everything old is new again! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(Dutch_game_show)

Which I recently found out originated in the US: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(American_game_show)

Re: Wordle Is a Love Story

#80

Post by Vinnl »

d--b wrote: post #53

The game's great but I'm puzzled why no one mentions that this is a verbatim copy of Lingo, a 1987 tv show that's been adapted in many countries. I used to watch this in France where it was very successful. Once people got too good at 5-letter words, they ran 6, then 7, and finally 8 letters.

Nine days ago :)

> Fun fact: this concept is also the basis for a game show on Dutch national TV. I took part two years ago, and spent way too much time optimising our strategy: https://vincenttunru.com/hacking-a-gameshow/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29713212

And we even went up to ten letters! (Albeit in a slightly different format.)

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