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Wordle Is a Love Story
- paxys 5y ago- 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.
- steveylang 5y agoSo when is Scott from HQ Trivia gonna start emceeing this?
- kevinmgranger 5y agoI hope the third point stays unchanged too. Too many services out there optimize for engagement, the expense being the encouragement of addictive behaviors.
- rockostrich 5y agoEverything to do with the game is hard coded into the client. I doubt there's any plan to change that. But I wouldn't be surprised if clones popped up that tried to maximize engagement/revenue.
- lapetitejort 5y agoI've already found a clone that lets me play as many words as desired with as many characters. The only downside is that I've burnt myself out two days after discovering Wordle.
- MBCook 5y agoWithout ads or logins to sell information from, what’s the need to maximize engagement?
- kevinmgranger 5y agoI've seen at least one FOSS project chasing engagement even with little to no financial incentive. Notoriety and "number go up" is enough incentive sometimes.
- quickthrowman 5y agoAgreed. Only one word a day makes me take my time and use the fewest guesses possible instead of brute forcing it by reusing dead letters. It feels more like a puzzle than a game, and the novelty lasts longer. I don’t think it would be getting the traction it has if it allowed endless play. It’s a throwback to the daily rebus/crossword/quiz newspaper page.
- serverholic 5y agoI 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.
- rchaud 5y agoThis sounds like the writing prompt for a Onion.com article that begins with "local man".
- kelseyfrog 5y agoMaybe they enjoy non-monetary rewards? One of the joys of the internet for me is experiencing peoples' self-less creations. More of that please!
- serverholic 5y agoI think the inventor of the internet shouldn't have to work another day in his life. In our society that means money.
- sbarre 5y agoDid you actually read the article? It sounds like he's getting much more of a reward than money.
- quickthrowman 5y agoIs this the setup for a new genre of joke, the punchline being The Capitalists!” instead of “The Aristocrats!” ?
- harscoat 5y ago- enriching for non native speaker. (Not so easy to come up with 5 letter correct words.)
- tjpnz 5y ago- Not banal
- snayan 5y ago4 guesses today. First time it hasn't taken 6 lol
- acberk 5y agoIf you want more than 1 Wordle a day, I forked his code and added a randomizer. Same daily word, same dictionary of words, same code. wordle.berknation.com
- ChrisArchitect 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29784601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29784601
- wffurr 5y ago“It’s not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It’s just a game that’s fun.” Love it.
- wenc 5y agoWhat’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.
- bradleybuda 5y agoI like TRAIL - no "E", but the next two big vowels and TRL are very good consonants
- Sohcahtoa82 5y agoWhat a coincidence. I played this for the first time today and started with TRIAL.
- deniska 5y agoLast couple times I started with the word which rhymes with "tennis".
- stewx 5y agoThe only word I can think of that rhymes with "tennis" is "menace". That's 6 letters. But I think I know what you meant.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y agoWhat accent do you have that those two words rhyme?
- rusbus 5y agothe optimal 5 letter starting work is SERAI (as computed by someone's AI)
- MerelyMortal 5y agoThere was HN post a few weeks ago to a blog where someone computed SOARE as the optimal word. Correction: a month ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29439191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29439191
- vishnugupta 5y agoThis is an easier version of Bulls & Cows [1] game I played in college during boring classes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulls_and_Cows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulls_and_Cows
- ajayvk 5y agoI built a version of Bulls and Cows at https://cowbull.co/ https://cowbull.co/, mainly for my kids to play. One difference in Wordle is that when there is a match, Wordle shows which letters matched. In Bulls and Cows, it just tells the number of letters which matched, which makes it a bit more difficult in some ways.
- detritus 5y agoThanks for this - it looks it'll be ideal for feeding the craving after my partner and mine's daily Wordle!
- slg 5y agoI 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 functionality and how that led to virality on Twitter.
- rcoveson 5y agoThe appeal of vocabulary games is that they encourage you to flex your memory. They remind you of words you know that you might not use under normal circumstances. As for the luck, sure, there's some of that. But you have plenty of guesses to get to the word if you play according to letter frequency, and always maximize the information you'll get out of a guess. Think of it like counting cards. The goal is to shift the odds as much in your favor as possible. Most games are like that. Deterministic, perfect-information games are a just a small subset of games.
- slg 5y agoBut the goal isn't just to complete the puzzle. At least in my social circle, there is much more focus on the score rather than on just completing it. There are other word games that have a much better balance of skill and luck. The NYT Spelling Bee game mentioned in the article is one example.
- _bfhp 5y agoMy friend group doesn't focus on score, we just celebrate getting lucky or lament if we take until the last try. There is a point about luck taking away from the longevity of the game. Unless the developer adds more game dimensions (in the same minimal, non-intrusive way) I kinda think most people will stop playing in a few months
- iams 5y agoThe skill is in not leaving yourself with two words that would both fit. If earlier you had tried a word with both an 'm' and a 'g' such as 'image' you would not have been left in a position where you would have to have a lucky guess
- coverband 5y agoThis has become one of my favorites since I learned about it from NYT. It's more fun if you use the "hard mode" where your next word attempt has to include the right letters/spaces found in the prior try.
- dotsam 5y agoTip: don’t look at the source if you don’t want to see the answers (I thought the words might be obfuscated but they’re not)
- flanbiscuit 5y agoI was wondering about this but I haven't looked yet. ... So I just took a look now. Are you talking about the huge list of ~12,974 words embedded right in the code?
- dotsam 5y agoYes, if like me you search the source for the word you just won with, you will see future answers, as they are listed in order (at least the preceding word was yesterday's answer)
- flanbiscuit 5y agoohhhhh, ok I see it now. I wasn't paying attention to order or even any of the other words. I made sure not to look at the words after today's as I don't want to cheat.
- bspammer 5y agoThere are two massive lists, one is the wordlist and one is the actual answers in date order.
- seedless-sensat 5y agoThe NYTimes spelling bee, which they said they were inspired by, also is unobscured in the source
- mhb 5y agoSeems like it would be important to note in the rules that letters can be used more than once even if they're green.
- MBCook 5y agoI’ve played twice now and had trouble. Today I had to resort to “cheating” using a scrabble word search site. Because I didn’t know that was allowed/possibly required. Looking forward to tomorrow.
- supernova87a 5y agoI wish I could play a few more games at once and not be metered 1 per day.
- beepy 5y agoIf you happen to be on an Apple device, may I humbly suggest you look up "Three Magic Words" on the app store. It's a different take on the same root game, sometimes called "Jotto" or "Ghost."
- rockostrich 5y agoIf you change your device's system clock then you can play as many times as you want.
- kermatrism 5y agoNot mine, but see https://foldr.moe/hello-wordl/ https://foldr.moe/hello-wordl/
- dbrueck 5y agoInterestingly, according to the article, it was the decision to limit it that led to its popularity.
- matsemann 5y agohttps://www.fiveletters.xyz/ https://www.fiveletters.xyz/ Allows for continuous play Repo here https://github.com/sigvef/fiveletters.xyz https://github.com/sigvef/fiveletters.xyz (not mine)
- Syzygies 5y agoReset your clock to tomorrow's date, and play again. That's how I confirmed that the solutions are in order, in the JavaScript.
- supernova87a 5y agoHah, how amusing. Client side self metering
- 5y ago
- egypturnash 5y agohttp://web.archive.org/web/20220106042510/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/technology/wordle-word-game-creator.html http://web.archive.org/web/20220106042510/https://www.nytime...
- jose-cl 5y agoI was scrolling for this. Thanks colega
- hencq 5y agoLOL, 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) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(Dutch_game_show)
- Signez 5y agoIn France, we had Motus [0], which is the same thing but with longer words — and it's actually an adaptation of Dutch version of Lingo! It ran on France 2 for 29 seasons and is widely known in French popular culture. [0]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motus_(jeu_t%C3%A9l%C3%A9vis%C3%A9) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motus_(jeu_t%C3%A9l%C3%A9vis%C...
- Vinnl 5y agoWhich I recently found out originated in the US: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(American_game_show) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(American_game_show)
- d--b 5y agoThe 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.
- Kiro 5y agoIt'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.
- Vinnl 5y agoNine 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://vincenttunru.com/hacking-a-gameshow/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29713212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29713212 And we even went up to ten letters! (Albeit in a slightly different format.)
- Jasper_ 5y agoIt goes back even further, to a word game from 1955, though I'm sure it's been invented earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jotto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jotto
- kirso 5y agoEverything is a remix!
- garrettjoecox 5y agoI’ve been able to play a handful of the past words with internet archive for anyone interested https://web.archive.org/web/20220105234455/https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220105234455/https://www.power...
- giarc 5y agoI can only see the top 2 rows of the keyboard. Adjusting the window size doesn't fix it.
- Arnavion 5y agoI used devtools to delete archive.org's header div. But also, you can just type with your keyboard, including Enter and Backspace.
- MerelyMortal 5y agoYou can play any day by changing the date on your device.
- jasone 5y agoI've been playing this as a road trip game since a friend introduced me to it in high school. Depending on the age of the people playing (and/or the fraction of concentration the driver needs to devote to driving) we also play with 3- or 4-letter words. 6 is a bit much for me to keep track of in my head.
- techsolomon 5y agosee also: Josh Wardle's talk on "Why April Fools' Day sucks and what we did about it at Reddit" – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXzfvYoFQFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXzfvYoFQFo
- frabjoused 5y agoThe eligible word list is an array of 5 char words embedded in the script. After digging a bit it looks like it gets the word like this (pseudocode): dayOffset = floor((today - 19 April 2021) / 864e5) index = dayOffset % wordList.length wordOfTheDay = wordList[index] edit: It's literally just picking the next item in the array in sequence.
- ryzvonusef 5y agonaturally, clones have emerged here is one I found today, you can have multiple tries, and chose word length http://foldr.moe/hello-wordl/ http://foldr.moe/hello-wordl/ wonder what other innovations occur before we round back into scrabble
- ryzvonusef 5y agohttps://octokatherine.github.io/word-master/ https://octokatherine.github.io/word-master/ Another clone
- mataherry 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30004743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30004743 Show HN: Wordlet - a Wordle Bookmarklet to add change day button (just in case you miss some days :P)