Yeah, I'd assume a good bit of that too. But I could see it kinda going the other way: Everyone wins, so losing is actually more interesting, and rather than being embarrassed by losing, people are all self-deprecating about it, like "haha wow i'm so dumb"
But people only do that because everyone says they're winning, because nobody initially wants to post their losses, and now the snake eats it tail.
Something I'd love to test about "hard mode" is how many legitimate English words remain after certain green letters. It'd depend on how deeply the game pool dips into the obscure--I'd hope not very far, since that'd be a frustrating experience. I agree that fishing for more individual letters is less useful than reducing the pool of possible words down to a handful. And when you focus on words that might fit, the heuristic-based pattern-matching language parts of your brain engage, which are perhaps better suited to a game like this than quantitative, analytical brain regions. Now I go consider how to get as many letters of RSTLNE in a five-letter word as possible...
I read somewhere that the game has two dictionaries of words. The first one is the guesses you're allowed to make, and it's about 10k words; the second is the words that could be solutions, and it's about 2k words. I have no idea how many many 5-letter words I know, but that seems small? It's definitely not a bunch of NYT crossword words at least.
This post seems like the very interesting other side of the story: https://notfunatparties.substack.com/p/wordle-solver If you're a computer and don't need to remember words or do any sound-it-out pattern matching, the strategic approach makes a lot more sense.
2k sounds about right, given that native English speakers know about 15-20k words, not counting conjugations and plurals (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44569277)
It’s probably a good reason for limiting the game to 1 shared word a day instead of a high score approach (other than the charming social aspect). You can run the game for over 5 years at a word a day, but spam it and 2k words don’t last long.
yeah, the once a day thing where everyone plays the same puzzle seems to be a big part of the game's magic. Everyone plays, most people win, but you can still have good wins and scary wins.
I think it depends on your vocabulary, but by and large I rejected obscure words, because they were rarely correct. The tough ones for me were usually multiple normal words with 4 green letters.
Anecdotally, from people posting their Ls on Twitter, this definitely seems to be the most common. It's getting "_ATCH" on the third guess, and have seven possible letters that could work.
Yes, that one, and others like it. I was very proud of myself for getting "cynic" in two with only three yellow letters after "policy" as an opener. I had to really stare at my options and take a deep breath before typing the word.
I played 299 Wordle puzzles before Devang was paid to shut down, and had a winning percentage over 98%. I played "hard mode" about 50% of the time, and found it much easier to win, although more likely to require 4-5 tries. I will miss Wordle from my life, but my average time per game was well below 10 minutes. One game per day isn't worth worrying about. I won't pay the NYT for the privilege. And FWIW, it was the numerous times when I had four greens after two guesses that made me the craziest, because there were often more possibilities than opportunities. I had to try to outguess the potential cultural biases of the algorithm. It gave me more sympathy for those who complained about the SAT's cultural bias, although Wordle is simply a hunt for a real word without context.
Mar 26, 2022·edited Mar 26, 2022Liked by Benn Stancil
I play in mixed-modes I guess. Mostly pinning, but strategically when there is little choice.
My proudest moment:
arise 🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️
chant🟨🟨🟨⬜️🟨
match ⬜️🟩🟩🟩🟩
Cornered! Is it hatch, watch, latch, batch, or patch??? At this point I could get it in 1 guess or 5 guesses… Let’s test them all in one guess, and guarantee a win in 2!
Not to bring Bayes into this... but I think the "hard mode" approach forces people to think with a bayesian approach, which helps them in the long run. Once they get green, they update their priors and can reevaluate the probability of each letter appearing in each remaining square. This isn't to say you can't do this in strategic mode, but I think it's a harder, and people are probably doing anxiously doing this before meetings, or ya know, at midnight...
Yeah, I think that's the story. People are loose bayesians, where we we have a much easier time updating our priors by putting letters in the right spot and narrowing our possible choices. Computers do the same thing, but don't need the help of putting letters in the right spot to narrow their lists.
I would imagine that very few people tweet results when they get stumped.
Yeah, I'd assume a good bit of that too. But I could see it kinda going the other way: Everyone wins, so losing is actually more interesting, and rather than being embarrassed by losing, people are all self-deprecating about it, like "haha wow i'm so dumb"
But people only do that because everyone says they're winning, because nobody initially wants to post their losses, and now the snake eats it tail.
Something I'd love to test about "hard mode" is how many legitimate English words remain after certain green letters. It'd depend on how deeply the game pool dips into the obscure--I'd hope not very far, since that'd be a frustrating experience. I agree that fishing for more individual letters is less useful than reducing the pool of possible words down to a handful. And when you focus on words that might fit, the heuristic-based pattern-matching language parts of your brain engage, which are perhaps better suited to a game like this than quantitative, analytical brain regions. Now I go consider how to get as many letters of RSTLNE in a five-letter word as possible...
I read somewhere that the game has two dictionaries of words. The first one is the guesses you're allowed to make, and it's about 10k words; the second is the words that could be solutions, and it's about 2k words. I have no idea how many many 5-letter words I know, but that seems small? It's definitely not a bunch of NYT crossword words at least.
This post seems like the very interesting other side of the story: https://notfunatparties.substack.com/p/wordle-solver If you're a computer and don't need to remember words or do any sound-it-out pattern matching, the strategic approach makes a lot more sense.
2k sounds about right, given that native English speakers know about 15-20k words, not counting conjugations and plurals (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44569277)
It’s probably a good reason for limiting the game to 1 shared word a day instead of a high score approach (other than the charming social aspect). You can run the game for over 5 years at a word a day, but spam it and 2k words don’t last long.
yeah, the once a day thing where everyone plays the same puzzle seems to be a big part of the game's magic. Everyone plays, most people win, but you can still have good wins and scary wins.
I think it depends on your vocabulary, but by and large I rejected obscure words, because they were rarely correct. The tough ones for me were usually multiple normal words with 4 green letters.
Anecdotally, from people posting their Ls on Twitter, this definitely seems to be the most common. It's getting "_ATCH" on the third guess, and have seven possible letters that could work.
Yes, that one, and others like it. I was very proud of myself for getting "cynic" in two with only three yellow letters after "policy" as an opener. I had to really stare at my options and take a deep breath before typing the word.
I played 299 Wordle puzzles before Devang was paid to shut down, and had a winning percentage over 98%. I played "hard mode" about 50% of the time, and found it much easier to win, although more likely to require 4-5 tries. I will miss Wordle from my life, but my average time per game was well below 10 minutes. One game per day isn't worth worrying about. I won't pay the NYT for the privilege. And FWIW, it was the numerous times when I had four greens after two guesses that made me the craziest, because there were often more possibilities than opportunities. I had to try to outguess the potential cultural biases of the algorithm. It gave me more sympathy for those who complained about the SAT's cultural bias, although Wordle is simply a hunt for a real word without context.
I play in mixed-modes I guess. Mostly pinning, but strategically when there is little choice.
My proudest moment:
arise 🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️
chant🟨🟨🟨⬜️🟨
match ⬜️🟩🟩🟩🟩
Cornered! Is it hatch, watch, latch, batch, or patch??? At this point I could get it in 1 guess or 5 guesses… Let’s test them all in one guess, and guarantee a win in 2!
whelp 🟩🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Bingo!
WATCH 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Matrix math, but it happens a lot! I hated those.
Not to bring Bayes into this... but I think the "hard mode" approach forces people to think with a bayesian approach, which helps them in the long run. Once they get green, they update their priors and can reevaluate the probability of each letter appearing in each remaining square. This isn't to say you can't do this in strategic mode, but I think it's a harder, and people are probably doing anxiously doing this before meetings, or ya know, at midnight...
Yeah, I think that's the story. People are loose bayesians, where we we have a much easier time updating our priors by putting letters in the right spot and narrowing our possible choices. Computers do the same thing, but don't need the help of putting letters in the right spot to narrow their lists.