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The generally optimal thing is to choose guesses to reduce the set of possible targets as much as possible. This is the same as choosing guesses with maximal en
by canjobear 5y ago
The generally optimal thing is to choose guesses to reduce the set of possible targets as much as possible. This is the same as choosing guesses with maximal entropy over the resulting patterns (that is, the result you get back from the game should be maximally informative). Because greens are rare, by maximizing the probability of greens, you are approximately maximizing the entropy of patterns, by distributing probability mass among rare patterns. This is why going for greens is a good heuristic.
- ascar 5y agoThis sounds like the optimal strategy for a single guess. But shouldn't the optimal strategy for solving the game include that there are multiple guesses? While some specific word might provide the highest reduce in entropy for the first guess, it might actually negatively impact the entropy reduction of remaining possible words compared to another first guess. E.g. if RAISE is the optimal reduction in search space for the given word list, what's the best 2nd guess for every possible word? Now taking the average 2nd guesses into account, is there a better first guess?
- canjobear 5y agoGood point. Because the set of possible guesses is constrained, the totally general solution needs to take future guesses into account. There doesn't seem to be a way to find the optimal guess other than searching the whole game tree (which it looks like someone in another comment did).