3 ms·

I took into account the position constraints you learn from the game after entering the word too. This is why "raise" beats "arise" for example.

capitainenemo 5y ago
oh. that's an excellent point. I hadn't thought about that. right letter wrong place is far less useful than right letter right place.
- capitainenemo 5y ago
  hm. again I don't know what dictionary he's using, but using /usr/share/dict/words and some more shell I get: 1st: 303 t 305 p 343 b 370 c 629 s 2nd: 404 u 511 e 530 i 699 o 758 a 3rd: 325 n 370 r 405 o 444 i 515 a 4th: 253 a 299 l 313 n 358 t 1013 e 5th: 291 t 394 d 472 y 495 e 1506 s So.. I guess unsurprisingly ending a word in "es" is the way to go and an "a" is 2nd is pretty good closely followed by "o" With those values "cares" or "bares" seems like a better bet? It gets you that popular r in 3rd, and the ending es...
- mortehu 5y ago
  > right letter wrong place is far less useful than right letter right place It's not that easy. If you're guessing the most common position for a letter, you may not be gaining the maximum amount of information. The heuristics approach you're using won't beat brute force evaluation of all possible guesses for all possible solutions (which is only a few million combinations).
  - capitainenemo 5y ago
    Well, part of the goal is also to finish in less than 6 guesses, so surely an optimal starting pattern is best. And since you can't do better than each letter being unique, you might as well ensure those unique letters are both common and ideally positioned. From that point on, the remaining words I guess you could brute force, or combine statistical with statistical to cover best letters first. I'm sure brute forcing will probably guarantee a win almost always, but will it be, for example a 3 or 4 word win which is pretty easy to do for a human.

capitainenemo 5y ago

oh. that's an excellent point. I hadn't thought about that. right letter wrong place is far less useful than right letter right place.

capitainenemo 5y ago
hm. again I don't know what dictionary he's using, but using /usr/share/dict/words and some more shell I get: 1st: 303 t 305 p 343 b 370 c 629 s 2nd: 404 u 511 e 530 i 699 o 758 a 3rd: 325 n 370 r 405 o 444 i 515 a 4th: 253 a 299 l 313 n 358 t 1013 e 5th: 291 t 394 d 472 y 495 e 1506 s So.. I guess unsurprisingly ending a word in "es" is the way to go and an "a" is 2nd is pretty good closely followed by "o" With those values "cares" or "bares" seems like a better bet? It gets you that popular r in 3rd, and the ending es...
mortehu 5y ago
> right letter wrong place is far less useful than right letter right place It's not that easy. If you're guessing the most common position for a letter, you may not be gaining the maximum amount of information. The heuristics approach you're using won't beat brute force evaluation of all possible guesses for all possible solutions (which is only a few million combinations).
- capitainenemo 5y ago
  Well, part of the goal is also to finish in less than 6 guesses, so surely an optimal starting pattern is best. And since you can't do better than each letter being unique, you might as well ensure those unique letters are both common and ideally positioned. From that point on, the remaining words I guess you could brute force, or combine statistical with statistical to cover best letters first. I'm sure brute forcing will probably guarantee a win almost always, but will it be, for example a 3 or 4 word win which is pretty easy to do for a human.