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Winning Wordle
- lejohnq 5y agoI also enjoyed this video from 3Blue1Brown about solving wordle with information theory: https://youtu.be/v68zYyaEmEA https://youtu.be/v68zYyaEmEA
- timtas 5y agoMy stats: 1 - 0 (0%) 2 - 7 (17%) 3 - 13 (32%) 4 - 16 (39%) 5 - 4 (10%) 6 - 1 (2%) lose - 0 (0%) My strategy: - Always start with the same word, one that has the most common letters - Prefer more common letters to less common letters - Prefer more common words to less common words - Starting with round three, never guess until I know all possible common words - Don't repeat a letter unless the only other possible words are uncommon - Prefer consonant combinations at the start of the word over staring with a vowel - Never do plurals (I think the game does not use them) A guiding principle is maximize learning at each round. I have a manual written process for listing all possible combinations at each step and iterating on each to find all possible words. I usually start that on the third round. I've written a small program that takes a pattern (like ??EA?) and a list of eliminated letters and spits out all possible words. My wife says it's cheating, so I rarely use it. I don't think it's cheating because it only saves me time going through all possible combinations on paper. I guess there's some chance it will suggest a common word I would have never hit on manually. I don't deny that my high rate of second guess wins is partly luck. But I contend that the N is large enough by now that it's at least partly my strategy.
- timtas 5y agoEDIT: I misspoke saying that my strategy maximizes learning. I will explain. I always apply all learnings to the next guess. That is, with each guess I use all the confirmed letters and put them in the confirmed positions. This DOES NOT maximize learning. That would require using all new letters every time until you know the word for sure. But this would reduce overall performance by eliminating luck in early rounds. So it's more correct to say my strategy balances between learning and serendipity.
- benatkin 5y ago"handy swift glove crump" reminds me of "correct horse battery staple"
- nojito 5y agoIt's always enjoyable for me to go through Norvig's python notebooks, because I always learn something new!
- taeric 5y agoIn the first section where "world" gives "...gy". I'm stuck on trying to see why the d gave a y. What am I misreading? Edit:. Ah, I was reversing which was the guess and which was the answer. Makes sense now.
- behnamoh 5y agoWordle is the only thing I haven't tried to outsmart by learning about its math, programming, and tricks that increase your chance of winning. I think those things take away all the joy that I get from Wordle.
- drowning_sushi 5y agoCompletely agree. Wordle is fun without the hyper-analysis
- taeric 5y agoMeh, the math doesn't really check out, for the human experience. Specifically, it only really works if you have all of the candidate words memorized. That is, you can have fun with the analysis and with playing the game as a human. I'm interested to know how things change if you require hard mode.
- maxerickson 5y agoThe word list doesn't matter a lot. https://www.bestwordlist.com/edit.htm?/5letterwords.txt https://www.bestwordlist.com/edit.htm?/5letterwords.txt has a generic word list and illustrates how fast it shrinks as information is revealed.
- taeric 5y agoIt matters for the precise statements these analysis papers are making. That is, the math is clearly accurate and describes how you can do with perfect knowledge. If you want to grade yourself against that, by all means consider it. For casual play, though, these numbers are not at all a reflection on what your rates will be.
- hammock 5y ago>If I win in two guesses, am I good or lucky? ...The probability of winning in two guesses is about 2%, so the answer is: mostly lucky >What first guess maximizes the number of expected wins on the second guess? A: FILET gives you 57.5 expected wins (out of 2,315) Note that 57.5 / 2315 = 2.4%, so being "good" at the first word can only improve your chances of a two-guess win by at most ~20%. Not that much. I believe that stat illuminates a MAJOR factor for why Wordle is so popular that I haven't seen discussed yet: it's a game of (almost) pure luck, that successfully gives every man, woman and child of diverse intelligence the perception of being very smart, occasionally. It's a pat-on-the-back generator that works for everyone, not just those with high aptitude. It's a lottery ticket, if winning the lottery meant you could show off how smart you are.
- ghaff 5y agoThat assumes a two word guess is the only objective. (And, yes, that's luck.) But wins in the 3, 4, 5 turn category are pretty common absent a lack of luck. That said, it's probably easier than it looks at first glance and given a decent vocabulary and some sense for word and word pair frequencies in different positions you'll probably finish at 6 turns or less unless you really go down a bad path.
- hammock 5y agoSame logic would apply for 3 etc turns but different numbers.
- taeric 5y agoHard mode can really trap you. Got lucky and found all but one letter? Hope that you didn't use a common sequence! :)
- function_seven 5y agoI really am finding new layers to this game. I play hard mode, and when entering my initial guess, I try to put common letters in uncommon positions. I'd much rather get a bunch of yellows than a bunch of greens at this stage.
- lucideer 5y ago> (2) What is a winning strategy I can memorize? > Q: What simple strategy guarantees a win within 6 guesses? I've seen a lot of analyses of Wordle that pose this question, and I feel like these are not people who play Wordle (not unlikely - these are seemingly people more interested in analysing the game from a statistical standpoint than simply playing directly). But while the answer to this question is interesting enough, it's not that interesting. People I've spoken to who play have zero interest in winning in 5 or 6 guesses - in fact most would consider a score of 6/6 a loss (or at least a relatively bad score), unless it was a particularly tricky word. > (1) If I win in two guesses, am I good or lucky? Q: What first guess maximizes the number of guaranteed wins on the second guess? Q: What first guess maximizes the number of expected wins on the second guess? > The probability of winning in two guesses is about 2%, so the answer is: mostly lucky. These - and the follow-ups I was hoping for for 3, 4 & 5 guesses respectively - are much more interesting questions. * Yes I can just clone this and edit to find these things out (& probably will later this week) but I'm just commenting on my confusion around why there's so much focus on the least interesting part of a problem.
- furyofantares 5y ago> I've seen a lot of analyses of Wordle that pose this question, and I feel like these are not people who play Wordle Interesting thought. But idunno, I am prettty into wordle, I agree with you, my goal with the daily is to get it in 3 as often as possible, but when it comes to "extracurriculars" I'm interested in all sorts of questions that are divorced with this concern. And I'm actually not that interested in deeply analyzing the part I enjoy most (getting the daily in 3).
- lucideer 5y agoThat's certainly another possibility :) > I'm actually not that interested in deeply analyzing the part I enjoy most (getting the daily in 3). I think I'm similar; I've been using the same starter word since almost day 1, and despite having seen lots of very compelling evidence that it is suboptimal, I have not changed it :D But I'm still somehow interested in what is optimal (& I guess oddly passionate about the definition of optimality).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- atrudeau 5y agoA related question is: "What is the smallest fixed set of guesses which always solve Wordle, narrowing down possible hidden words to just one?". So far the answer is 8: MODEL LEVIN TAPPA GRABS DURGY FLYTE CHAWK SPOOR [1]. Bringing this down to 5 would mean that one could always win at Wordle with the same set of 5 guesses. Seems unlikely that such a solution exists, but interesting question nonetheless. [1]: https://github.com/alexandres/magicwordschallenge https://github.com/alexandres/magicwordschallenge
- lupire 5y ago> Updates > March 2nd, 2022: Armavica has found a set of 7 words that solve Wordle! They are CLANG FATTY ODDER RUMBA SKILL VERGE WHOOP.
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoFEAST BRING CHUMP DOWLY The first 1-3 words may "strike" early. But victory is inevitable it seems with those. They seem pretty durable against sneaky double-letter words too. HANDY SWIFT GLOVE CRUMP seem to lack the concentration of "quick strike" letter combos onthe first two words (FEAST and BRING for me). Then CHUMP and DOWLY are "cleanup" guesses if not enough comes out of FEAST / BRING. But I don't have math behind it so... what do I really know.
- fsckboy 5y agoI don't have a problem with analyzing the dictionary, but analyzing the set of answers doesn't sit right with me on the "is this cheating?" scale
- deepspace 5y agoStrongly agree. For me, there are several levels of 'assistance' with the game, and at some point it becomes cheating. 1. Guessing the first word(s) randomly, and then solving from there. Not cheating at all, but frustrating for me, as I am terrible at anagrams. 2. Using a generic dictionary to check possible answers against. Not cheating. I use the standard dictionary in my Linux distro, filtered by 5-letter words. 3. Using the dictionary from the source code to check against. Skirting dangerously close to cheating, but probably OK. 4. Using the list of possible answers. Clearly cheating. 5. Using starting guesses that I concocted myself by studying a generic letter frequency table. Not cheating. 6. Using optimal starting guesses, generated by someone else, based on the WORDLE letter frequencies. Cheating. 7. Using software that I wrote to automate my elimination process based on the dictionary in (2). Again, skirting close to cheating, but possibly OK. 8. Using someone else's software to guess, based on solution graphs. Cheating.
- marrone12 5y agoHow is using any dictionary not cheating? Why would you check possible answers? Just enter them, if they're not words, you don't lose a guess.
- black3r 5y agoFor me "cheating" is anything I would not be able to come up with on my own, if I played the game with no prior knowledge, repeatedly, in an offline environment with no external assistance available.
- jibalt 5y agoIt's not a competition--and all the answers are known--so there's no such thing as cheating. People are free to take whatever approach to it they want to.
- nojs 5y agoIt looks like Peter has assumed equal probability for each solution. It would be interesting to apply a probability distribution across the wordlist, assuming the editors pick the words manually. I think this plays into my strategy subconsciously when I’m solving them.
- scaramanga 5y agoI thought they were randomly picked based on the date?
- andrewaylett 5y agoThe order was set at the start, the list is visible in the minified source. So a perfect oracle isn't merely possible, it's trivial. The fun comes from pretending that's not the case and playing it straight. And then from being able to use the oracle as an aid to analysis, if you're into that sort of thing.
- jibalt 5y agoThey were picked randomly, before the game was ever put online.
- klyrs 5y agoIf you don't assume uniform probability, but instead go by probability of each word on a given day, you can always win in one guess.
- drukenemo 5y agoI’ve lost completely my lust for Wordle after the NY Times acquisition. Don’t know exactly why. That said, I used to like to come up with my own strategies, to keep things interesting.
- unlimit 5y agoThere are probably hundreds of writeups on strategies to play Wordle. I play it for fun and I play it random. My first word is whatever comes to mind. I know I can increase my chances by selecting a word with more vowels in it but where is the fun in it. :-) I once got it on second word - it was pure chance. I am now waiting for the day when I get it on the first attempt. :-)
- pavel_lishin 5y agoI once guessed the word on my first try on the Russian version!
- albert_e 5y agoVODKA !
- imglorp 5y agoI think this is something the numerical analysts are missing. They are looking at probability and frequency, which tells you about an outcome given a perfect, logical player with unbounded matching skills. But a human player though might do better by priming their pattern matcher with something more likely to trigger good hints, such as knowing more vowels. My start word is often AEONS
- lupire 5y agoThe problem with vowels is that there are sooo many words for each vowel pattern.
- flossmaster 5y agoIf I win in two guesses, am I good or lucky? FLOSS TEETH Instant win!
- instagraham 5y agoI saw ROATE PULIS CHYND mentioned here once and have been using it ever since. I find its mechanic precision and usefulness soothing, though it's unhelpful on a few occasions. It removes a lot of the fog of war and since it leaves me with few guesses remaining, keeps the game tense enough to be fun
- symlinkk 5y ago> I find its mechanic precision and usefulness soothing Are you feeling ok?
- magpi3 5y agoAre you feeling obnoxious?
- instagraham 5y agoNot really brother
- euroderf 5y agoI use this too and its usefulness has dropped in the NY Times version.
- julianz 5y agoBut nothing much has changed, the list of answers is still almost exactly the same as it was before the NYT acquired it.
- noveltyaccount 5y agoMy opener: SOARE CLINT PUDGY Developed it looking at the answer and guess lists and finding words that maximize frequency and placement. E.g. Y and E are very commonly seen in fifth position. No code, just excel and searching the word lists with regular expressions. It's so effective the game lost a lot of its fun :( I almost always get the answer on guess #4. The days I struggle and get it on guess 5 or 6 are fun though! :)
- sanmon3186 5y agoQUOTA and RILEY are my go to opening words.
- zild3d 5y agoQ doesn't really help much in a first guess
- scaramanga 5y agoAh nice, I was using SALET CHIMP BOUND or would go for something with a Y in it for the third if there looked like a lack of vowels so far. I hadn't gotten around to doing an analysis on what 3 words would be good for a slightly more dynamic/complex strategy than 4 fixed words.
- lake_vincent 5y agoLOUIE PARTY has also been so effective for me it almost takes the fun out of it. Usually get it in 3/6, but never more than 4.
- raesene9 5y agoI went for SOARE, TULIP, NYMPH. The first two to get all the verbs in and then NYMPH to get as many consonants as possible, it's generally not too bad it seems.
- weeksie 5y agoSERAI If there are no S's I'll start the next word with a CH, if there is an S in first place I'll start with SH. Pretty consistent 3-4.
- mellosouls 5y agoI have blacklisted Wordle using app-blocking after spending nearly an hour on one, and consider my winning strategy now optimised.
- Kluny 5y agoSounds like a quitter to me.
- jibalt 5y agoSound judgmental and rude to me.
- ritusomani 5y ago[dead]
- rsfern 5y agoI like to ask my four year old for an opener word every morning. He usually just says “water!”, but the ensuing discussion often leads to a fun opener
- kmstout 5y agoThe dictionary seems to be from aspell. After a couple stock guesses, I can usually win in another turn or two using `aspell dump master` and some grepping.
- marrone12 5y agoIt's not winning if you use a dictionary and grep...
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoIt might improve your regex skills though.
- CamperBob2 5y agoI don't agree with Norvig here. The optimal strategy is to reduce the number of degrees of freedom in subsequent guesses as early as possible. Essentially, pick words that would earn you the lowest Scrabble scores. I used to start with TEARS. Once I realized that they never used plurals, I switched to STARE, since putting the S at the end doesn't appreciably lower the entropy. I usually end up winning with 3 guesses, which is the point where strategy starts to pay off. (I do agree with Peter that 2-guess wins are almost always due to luck.)
- jibalt 5y agoNorvig's statements are mathematically proven.
- CamperBob2 5y agoWith different goals. I try to minimize the number of required guesses, while he is trying to maximize the odds of a 2-guess win. To do that, he deliberately avoids guessing letters that would fit the more-common cases where a 2-guess win is extremely unlikely. In other words, Norvig's approach requires you to guess letters that aren't that likely to appear at all. He will get more 2-guess wins, but I will do better in the long run.
- jibalt 5y ago"while he is trying to maximize the odds of a 2-guess win" You seem not to have read past the first few lines of the article.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- CamperBob2 5y agoMaybe I misinterpreted what I did read. Is he saying that early-stage guesses that contain uncommon letters is the optimal strategy? If so, I'll go back and try to understand the specific reasoning, because that doesn't sound right.
- gordon_freeman 5y agofor the folks who love playing Wordle, you may also like playing the "Mini" crossword (available on NYT Games iOS app) which is free to play and available daily. Wordle has truly made me interested in word games and I'd love if you have any other recommendations.
- zild3d 5y agoI think of wordle as more of a math game disguised as a word game
- lordgrenville 5y agoI feel like my Python always gets better from reading Norvig's notebooks. Didn't know you could rename decorators!
- vertnerd 5y agoOnce I realized that solving in one guess or two doesn't take any particular skill, I began to wonder what "winning" Wordle really means. It's a game that you play for fun. If folks want to analyze the dictionaries to develop their strategy because it's fun for them, then they're doing it right. Not cheating. If you prize Wordle solution patterns that are symmetrical or aesthetically pleasing because it's fun, then you're doing it right. If you try to see how many consecutive hard-mode guesses you can make with NO correct letters because it's fun, then you're doing it right. If you try to see how far you can skew your distribution towards six without ever losing because it's fun, then you're doing it right.
- jibalt 5y agoNicely put.
- serial_dev 5y agoVery well put, especially with the focus on the fact that having fun means different things for different people. I played the game maybe twice, the game itself is just very boring and hard for me (though generally, I hate playing games, so it's not a critique on the game). But! I read the source code and checked the implementation. I read many different strategies optimizing for different aspects of the game. I implemented a very naive solver in JavaScript, then I thought about more advanced data structures and algorithms I could use to improve my naive solver (both from the game's POV and from the computational POV). I watched videos cloning the app with different frameworks (or without) and technologies (mobile, command line, web) and I listened to the author on a podcast. I'm having fun and I'm learning while doing these things, so I appreciate Wordle, even if I can't be bothered to solve the daily word.
- fheisler 5y agoAgreed, I like discovering interesting patterns and strategies, but always using the same 'best' openers is less exciting. I made a browser extension to show remaining solution counts and make it easier to restart the game without losing my streak - I usually use it to play around more after solving the day's word. https://github.com/everythingishacked/Hackle https://github.com/everythingishacked/Hackle
- tbonza 5y agohttps://github.com/norvig/pytudes/issues/118 https://github.com/norvig/pytudes/issues/118 Norvig's Sudoku solver inspired me to make my own Wordle solver last month
- drej 5y agoPerhaps I'm mistaken, but from an interview with the game author, I gathered that you can use 10k+ words, only ~2300 of those being candidates for the winning word. But the analysis only uses the latter subset. So in theory there could be a valid 5-letter that could be a good opener, even if it cannot be a winning word.
- socket0 5y agoWordle is basically gambling, but like a lot of games of chance you can improve your odds using skill. A good vocabulary, good starter words, solid analytical skills. But peeking at the word list, players are often still left with three or four viable options after two or three guesses. Lucky guesses will result in completing the daily game in three or four tries, unlucky guesses will push this up.
- wcfields 5y agoHaven't lost a game yet using PENIS / TOUCH as my first and second.
- alar44 5y agoWhat's with the Wordle obsession? Why is everyone so into this? I don't understand why this is sweeping the fucking nation right now.
- mbg721 5y agoThe 1970s Mastermind commercials aren't effective, because the mix of vitamins that's injected into bread and pasta no longer has that Gene Rayburn-esque quirk of making everyone crave earth-tone clothes. So Wordle is the next best thing.
- alar44 5y agoLOL. I love me some puzzle games but find Mastermind and Wordle equally boring. Mastermind was fun as a kid but once you learn the algorithm, it's just a chore.