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I wonder whether it is maximally adversarial. SPOILER At first I tried to solve starting with 'raise'. This led me down a path were I got words that fit '_ o

I wonder whether it is maximally adversarial. SPOILER At first I tried to solve starting with 'raise'. This led me down a path were I got words that fit '_ o _ _ y' which fits way too many words. I managed to solve it in 6 words by following a different strategy: Open up with 'lysin', this gives zero hits and then I played more standard which was easy because I didn't end up in a situation where I can't distinguish between options.

evouga 5y ago
It’s probably not as-adversarial-as-possible in the sense of maximizing the minimum number of guesses to win. From playing in an ad hoc way I found TINES->BOARD->LUMPY->CLUCK->FLUFF which wins in 5 moves. I feel like an even harder variant would “herd” you towards cases where you’re forced to guess consonants one or two at a time.
3np 5y ago
In that scenario, it can be helpful to try words that you know will fail, just to exhaust more unused letters in one guess.
- Bootvis 5y ago
  True, but I feel that is not in the spirit of the game.
  - jerf 5y ago
    I think the "problem" is that with decent play, the space of valid words simply isn't big enough for a game to drag out very long. The space of English words is in the tens of thousands, which is only 15-ish bits, and every guess is quite a few bit's worth of info (varies depending on what you put in, but with good guessing it's quite a few). As the author says, about the worst case you can get into is having all but one letter correct, for some letter that can be many different letters. But a decent player just isn't going to get the sort of quality adversarial gameplay you can get from Hatetris or something. The Wordle challenge is in getting it in 5, and even that isn't that hard for a casual word game enthusiast.
  - codebje 5y ago
    Absurdle is static - once you get a word in four it's beaten forever. The spirit of Wordle means it's better to always re-use your successful guesses, but Absurdle has no target word. It's a game of filtering the word list down to only one candidate as fast as you can.
mikepurvis 5y ago
I also ended up in the '_ o _ _ y' scenario, which for me terminated at JOLLY, but I wonder if there's something about applying "standard" Wordle strategies to the adversarial version that seems to lead people down this road.

evouga 5y ago

It’s probably not as-adversarial-as-possible in the sense of maximizing the minimum number of guesses to win. From playing in an ad hoc way I found TINES->BOARD->LUMPY->CLUCK->FLUFF which wins in 5 moves. I feel like an even harder variant would “herd” you towards cases where you’re forced to guess consonants one or two at a time.

3np 5y ago

In that scenario, it can be helpful to try words that you know will fail, just to exhaust more unused letters in one guess.

Bootvis 5y ago
True, but I feel that is not in the spirit of the game.
- jerf 5y ago
  I think the "problem" is that with decent play, the space of valid words simply isn't big enough for a game to drag out very long. The space of English words is in the tens of thousands, which is only 15-ish bits, and every guess is quite a few bit's worth of info (varies depending on what you put in, but with good guessing it's quite a few). As the author says, about the worst case you can get into is having all but one letter correct, for some letter that can be many different letters. But a decent player just isn't going to get the sort of quality adversarial gameplay you can get from Hatetris or something. The Wordle challenge is in getting it in 5, and even that isn't that hard for a casual word game enthusiast.
- codebje 5y ago
  Absurdle is static - once you get a word in four it's beaten forever. The spirit of Wordle means it's better to always re-use your successful guesses, but Absurdle has no target word. It's a game of filtering the word list down to only one candidate as fast as you can.

mikepurvis 5y ago

I also ended up in the '_ o _ _ y' scenario, which for me terminated at JOLLY, but I wonder if there's something about applying "standard" Wordle strategies to the adversarial version that seems to lead people down this road.