WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]
top | item 29864418

Show HN: Evil Wordle

177 points| raviparikh | 4 years ago |swag.github.io | reply

71 comments

order
[+] pxx|4 years ago|reply
> The goal is to maximize the amount of guesses it takes to find the word

The heuristic used is not optimal for this. You want to choose the set that takes the most number of guesses to split, which is not necessarily the set with the largest number of elements.

[+] sdwr|4 years ago|reply
Had this bouncing around my subconscious, thanks for crystallizing it.
[+] bspammer|4 years ago|reply
It's a cool idea, but it'd be nice to show which letters have been eliminated like "real" Wordle. I don't think not having them makes the game harder, just more tedious.
[+] raviparikh|4 years ago|reply
Good suggestion–I just added this!
[+] zwegner|4 years ago|reply
This uses different word lists than Wordle/Adversarial Wordle, but still has a 4-guess optimum, no 3-guess is possible.

My solver's found about a thousand so far, here's a good one: "abyes choup donut dingo" (note that there are a number of 'fake' words allowed for guesses).

[+] pxx|4 years ago|reply
This might be a solution for the suboptimal adversary used here but it's not a solution in general.

abyes GXXXX

choup XXXXX

donut XXYXX

dingo XYYYX

matches both

aging, again

so this solution doesn't actually partition the solution space the way you want it to.

[+] raviparikh|4 years ago|reply
> note that there are a number of 'fake' words allowed for guesses

I used a much larger dictionary for allowed guesses than for the actual words that get chosen.

[+] thaurelia|4 years ago|reply
I wonder what is the best strategy over a long distance?

“ALONE” and “SHIRT” cover 1st to 9th and 11th most common letters in English dictionary but then, you'll be getting more yellow letters in first two words which might not be the best approach (compared to completely eliminating 10 letters altogether).

Then, for words like “_OUCH”, it might be optimal to come up with a word containing as many potential first letters as possible (while omitting letters already in use, “ouch” in this case).

[+] salomon812|4 years ago|reply
So, there's another evil Wordle thread on Hacker News today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29862597) and over there, I've been refining my algorith for optimal play. Here's the current approach:

    R A I S E (0 green, 0 yellow, 168 words remain)
    B L U D Y (1 green, 0 yellow, 13 words remain)
    C O U N T (2 green, 1 yellow, 2 words remain)
    V O U C H (4 green, 0 yellow, 1 word remains)
    P O U C H (5 green, 0 yellow, 0 words remain)
But what was interesting was at one point of development, it did this:

    L A R E S (0 green, 0 yellow, 576 words remain)
    T O N I C (1 green, 0 yellow, 50 words remain)
    B O O D Y (4 green, 0 yellow, 5 words remain)
    D E G U M (0 green, 2 yellow, 1 word remains)
    G O O D Y (5 green, 0 yellow, 0 words remain)
See, the "BOODY" has 4 greens, but then it went and guess "DEGUM" to eliminate a lot of possibilities!
[+] bejelentkezni|4 years ago|reply
Paste to debug in 12 guesses. Had never heard of the original wordle before, cool game.

  wwwwY Paste

  wwwww Color

  wwwww Print

  wwwww Loops

  Ywwww Bombs

  RRwww Death

  RRRww Debts

  RRRww Debby (It should be obvious here that I didn't know how the game worked)
  
  RRRww Debit

  wYwww Junks (Questionable that this is counted as a real word imo)

  YwwwY Gorge

  RRRRR Debug
[+] cdubzzz|4 years ago|reply
This is fun! Though when I dove right in I mistakenly thought that the indicator for the correct letter was also indicating the correct position for that letter. But that was not the case. I had a weird combo and had to give up before I understood that.
[+] ianbicking|4 years ago|reply
My kid is now trying to solve it, keeping careful notes of letters. I explained what (I'm guessing) makes it evil, but she's undeterred. (Solved in 15)
[+] giarc|4 years ago|reply
Seems like this will be the same as the 2046 craze. Game becomes popular then a million copy-cats and off shoots get created.
[+] rkagerer|4 years ago|reply
Wordle itself stems from a really great two-player pen and paper game called Bulls and Cows that I used to play decades ago. Google it for the rules.
[+] gowld|4 years ago|reply
This engine is deterministic.

No computer assistance, no obscure words, hard mode:

  AIRED -----

  BOOTS -----

  PLUNK --U-K

  CHUCK CHUCK
[+] jimbob45|4 years ago|reply
22 guesses. Seems like the trick is to select letters in their worst positions first so that it later puts them in more favorable positions (e.g. don’t guess Q in the first spot if you can put it anywhere else first.
[+] Physkal|4 years ago|reply
I keep pull down refreshing the page and can't go back to what the word was. Also cataegories would be nice. Also a list of the alphabet at the bottom would cross out wrong guesses would be nice.
[+] allannienhuis|4 years ago|reply
the word is not pre-determined. it changes based on what you are guessing, to make it harder to guess a matching word.
[+] cableshaft|4 years ago|reply
I managed to get it in 6:

STRAP - ______

BIOME - __Y_Y

HOVEL - _G_G_

CONED - GG_GY

CODEX - GGGG_

CODEC - GGGGG

Cool idea, btw.

[+] turbonaut|4 years ago|reply
A (self-made) tool-assisted 5…

  1. LARES - xxxxx
  2. BIONT - xxYxx
  3. PUDGY - xxxxG
  4. COMFY - GGxxG
  5. COCKY - GGGGG
I agree - great idea.

It only took 22 hours’ CPU time, a custom string encoding and several trillion operations to work out LARES was a decent first go.

[+] raviparikh|4 years ago|reply
Nice! That’s the best I’ve managed as well.
[+] makach|4 years ago|reply
Evil Wordle: "bobby". I won after 12 guesses

Ha! fun game. The fun was writing a program to narrow down the alternative words, now I lost interest in the game.

[+] not2b|4 years ago|reply
I got 'bobby' in 7, a bit of luck perhaps.
[+] zjs|4 years ago|reply
Evil Wordle: "caver". I won after 6 guesses

  Y____
  YY___
  _____
  _G_GG
  GG_GG
  GGGGG
[+] zdwolfe|4 years ago|reply
Thanks, I hate it. [Cool game!]