Worldle

[deisner]

When do you get a yellow square? I couldn't find this documented anywhere, so I took a look at the code.

Here's what I found: For each guess, Worldle calculates a proximity score from 0 to 100 -- higher is better. Each row is basically a quantized proximity score meter, from 0 to 100 in increments of 20. If you get at least half-way to the next increment of 20 (i.e. to the next green square), you get a yellow square, too.

Example: If your proximity score for a guess is 63, you'll get 3 green squares and two blank (white or black) squares, i.e. GGGBB. If your score is 71, you'll get three green squares, and since 71 is at least half-way to 80 (i.e. >= 70), you'll also get a yellow square, so GGGYB.

The proximity score is round(100*(MAX_DISTANCE_ON_EARTH - d)/MAX_DISTANCE_ON_EARTH). Though that max distance is defined to be 20,000,000.

This is the important part: https://github.com/teuteuf/worldle/blob/67db30bdf79c0965c19a...

[blendergeek]

> Though that max distance is defined to be 20,000,000.

This is almost true (in real life). The meter was originally defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the north pole. Given that the earth is a fairly "nice" sphere, the maximum distance between any two points on earth is very close to 20,000,000 meters.

[umanwizard]

20 million meters is indeed about the maximum distance between any two points on Earth.

[skykooler]

I'm not sure how the yellow square rendering is implemented, but for me it just shows a empty Unicode character for it (Firefox on MacOS) - black squares render properly though.

[Ansil849]

I was extremely confused about the distance values in relation to the percentages until I read the help:

> The distances displayed correspond to the distances between the selected and the target territory centers.

> For instance, the computed distance between United States and Canada is around 2260km even if they have a common border.

That's extremely deceptive and non-obvious unless you read through the documentation. One of the appeals of Wordle is that it is an extremely intuitive game which doesn't require rule reading.

[Aeolun]

If you get a ‘country that’s 2000 km north of the USA’ and do not guess Canada (the ‘only’ country north of the US) then I don’t know what to say.

[function_seven]

So what is the percentage indicate separately from the distance?

I think the "right" way to display the distance would be from the closest points in the guessed and target territories. So United States and Canada, sharing a border, would be "0 km", while Canada and Mexico would be whatever the shortest path from border to border would be (like 2,000km?)

I have a feeling that's a bit more difficult than centers, though. But it wouldn't be a problem as far as outlying territories go; the image is of a contiguous landmass, not the entire country.

[Aunche]

What is the center of the US anyways? Does it include Alaska and Guam?

[WilTimSon]

To be fair, Wordle also doesn't require much external knowledge beyond a basic vocabulary. This is aimed at a more narrow crowd and is just a fun experiment.

[mcv]

Worldle also doesn't require rule reading. I've been playing it for a week and never read any documentation. It's quite intuitive if you're not interested in nitpicking exactly what the distance measurement means.

[ramzyo]

Yeah, I agree that’s pretty confusing. That being said I had to read the Wordle rules the first time I played. Had no idea what the differences were between colors and that a letter could be used multiple times in the same word.

[amelius]

Perhaps they should have picked:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausdorff_distance

[superasn]

I think the percentage could be relative size of countries instead. Still a hint and kinda intuitive.

[rplnt]

How is it deceptive? To me it's an extra tidbit of information that doesn't seem important. It's clearly linked with distance, so I know it's something to do with distance.

[vincnetas]

they could have simply used distance between geometries like st_distance in postgres. curious about edge cases here where for example one coordinate is 178 longitude and another -178 longitude. also does this game show whole countries which have territories over great distances like france denmark or norway

[cwkoss]

The arrows mean that the target is in that direction from your guess (NOT from the target country). I interpreted at as meaning the opposite, which made things tricky

[layer8]

On a sphere both interpretations are correct. ;)

[soperj]

What direction and how far away the country is.

[anonu]

RTFM

[e-clinton]

I like this but waiting a day for a new puzzle means I’ll never play it again

[quickthrower2]

Same feeling here for all the wordle clones I have seen on HN. Only the OG wordle can afford to do that.

[mikewarot]

It's a design feature, meant to enhance virality.

It also stops me from bingeing, which is a big plus.

[aasasd]

Just get a geography deck for Anki instead.

[amanzi]

I don't understand how this works? It had a picture of _____, and the correct answer was ______. Is it just guessing the country name based on the shape?

edit - hid my answer in case it wasn't as obvious to others.

[yardstick]

Todays question was super easy for a lot of people. Past countries have been things like Turks & Cacos, Liberia, Guatemala. Those I got close to and then the last guess or two I was scanning around google maps.

Yeah it’s not as fun as Wordle, kinda interesting for a few plays though.

[Galanwe]

> s it just guessing the country name based on the shape

Yes, and you get hints on distance and direction when wrong.

[wallacoloo]

oh, shoot. i assumed i was trying to guess an island nation since it wasn't rendered with any surroundings. but it renders all states this way — just the border, as if it had no neighbors?

[kej]

Globle is another daily geography game: https://globle-game.com/

[Galanwe]

It seems very buggy.

- lots of country guesses raise an error saying it doesn't exist. Such as "brasil".

- if you zoom on the map, there are flashings of the underlying map layer with country names...

- I got to find the exact match of "French Guiana (France)"...

[notimetorelax]

Please put it in bold font on the main page that there’s no way to get new puzzle and you need yo wait for a day. I was very confused while looking for the button to restart.

[distances]

Yeah I don't get the point of this as is. At least the current country is nothing short of obvious, so everyone gets it right on first guess and then just waits a day?

[stavros]

It's a bit frustrating that it changes daily, the first country was too easy so I missed out on all the mechanics and now I have to wait until tomorrow to try again.

[forgotmyoldacc]

What do the green dots represent? They only show up for a few seconds.

[macintux]

Simulates the Wordle feedback: the more green dots, the closer you are.

[bhelkey]

I'm assuming it is some loading animation.

[eyelidlessness]

The thing I find fascinating about this is that it will need to become contentious by fall, either by repetition or by selecting territories which are historical and/or unrecognized by some subset of the world with a real or perceived stake in that.

[qalmakka]

I discovered this a few days ago, but being the huge geography nerd I am I've never done worse than one attempt...

[hornej]

Trying to pronounce this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done

[Galanwe]

Is there a way to play previous day games? It's a bit sad when you just discover the game and can't try it out on 2/3 games.

[verisimi]

This is a fascist game that's all about indoctrinating us into accepting the artificial idea of nation states! :)

[infiniteseries]

I didn't make this, just found it interesting as a geography nerd. I'm not sure if the author is on HN or not

[drivers99]

Is it cheating to look at a map? I got a very nearby country so I looked to see what was around it which shows the shape quite clearly. I guess as an educational tool, it’s still very good that way. I now know how those countries are geographically related, in an area I don’t know very well.

[franky47]

For all of you who want to play more, the Wayback Machine has you covered:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/

[dirtyid]

Would be nice to have some more geographic hints like rivers or major cities, i.e. night lights. Also as someone whose long term memory of geography is sustained by occasionally humming Yakko's world song, it's depressing to learn how inaccurate / out of date it is.

See: Errors, Inaccuracies, and Other Geographical Trivia https://animaniacs.fandom.com/wiki/Yakko%27s_World_(song)

Recommend Map men's "The mystery of the squarest country" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mrNEVUuZdk

[pkdpic]

Well this is just fantastic. Appropriately humbling. I'm dumb though I need more clues.

[ergocoder]

Is this up to date? I can't input ukraine