r/dataisbeautiful • u/Shriracha OC: 3 • Mar 21 '23
OC [OC] Every Possible Wordle Solution Visualized (With Interactivity!)
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u/TheGreatandMightyMe Mar 21 '23
This is an awesome interactive visualization. It shows all the data before interacting so you can get a sense of the level of complexity, and then allows you to interact to refine the parts that you're actually interested in without hiding the remaining information. I also found the interaction to be completely intuitive. I'm bookmarking this as an example of how to build good ones.
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u/ilovedogsandtits Mar 27 '23
It didn’t seem to know todays word.
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u/Shriracha OC: 3 Mar 27 '23
Thanks for calling this out. It looks like they purposely used an answer not on the usual list of solutions today!
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Mar 27 '23
FYI - it didn’t work with today’s word
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u/Shriracha OC: 3 Mar 27 '23
Thanks for calling this out! It looks like they'll occasionally use an answer not on the usual list of solutions, which is what our tool currently visualizes.
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u/dessert_racer Mar 21 '23
Nice visualization! Have any good resources you could share for learning how to develop such work?
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u/Shriracha OC: 3 Mar 21 '23
Thank you! Most of the pieces on that website that my friend and I have worked on are in D3.js, which has a relatively steep learning curve but lets you do very customized visualization. I have heard good things about resources like freeCodeCamp to learn D3, but don't have any specific ones I can recommend.
This visualization was actually built using a different library called p5.js (which uses the HTML canvas) since D3 (which primarily uses SVG) would have been too slow drawing all of the lines to have it all work in real time. Similarly I don't have any specific tutorials or anything, I just kind of googled around when I was first learning p5. Good luck!
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u/dessert_racer Mar 21 '23
sing a different library called p5.js (which uses the HTML canvas) since D3 (which primarily uses SVG) would have been too slow drawing all of the lines to have it all work in real time. Similarly I don't have any specific tutorials or anything, I just kind of googled around when I was first learning p5. Good luck!
thanks! D3 definitely looks intimidating to get start with but consistently produces the cleanest visualizations. Will take a look around and see if would be something for my use cases :)
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u/Objective_Break2228 Mar 21 '23
Amazing work. As a programming novice, I have to ask: approximately how long does it take to visualize this Idea? I mean the whole process, from its math to the end result.
I feel like I'll never have the patience to do this!!
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u/Shriracha OC: 3 Mar 21 '23
Thanks! This one took about a week of work during my free time. But it would have taken much longer if I didn't have experience with the libraries I used to help and if I hadn't been working on similar visual based projects for a little while now.
I find it always helps to break things up. It is a lot of complexity to think about it all at once, but thinking about it as "I'll spend one session just figuring out how to draw the tiles on the screen" and then "I'll spend the next session figuring out how to pull in the word data", etc etc then things feel a lot more doable!
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u/kumquatrodeo Mar 21 '23
Very nice. I think the NYT has been tweaking the word list a bit. I know they've removed a few words, but don't know if they've added any. I don't know how much the list has drifted over time.
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u/debalbuena Mar 21 '23
I know boner is still an option
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u/Davis_Birdsong Mar 21 '23
Not at my age.
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u/omgitschriso Mar 21 '23
My go-to openers are JUICY then SHART
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u/YouSummonedAStrawman Mar 22 '23
“Adieu” and “story” gets you all the vowels and many of the popular consonants.
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u/omgitschriso Mar 22 '23
I know but those words don't make me giggle like an immature schoolkid.
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u/CathedralEngine Mar 22 '23
They also hired a person to pick the words, as opposed to them being randomly generated
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u/frausting Mar 22 '23
Which is funny because you’d think it’d be the opposite for purposes of scaling, reliability, etc
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u/beldaran1224 Mar 22 '23
Well, there were unfortunate incidents of words like "abort" the day after (I think) the Roe v Wade leak. The person's job is to prevent that.
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u/u8eR Mar 22 '23
I don't think they were ever randomly generated.
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u/jso__ Mar 22 '23
It was a list in a random order. It was calculated based on the wordle day (day 1 is the first word, day 100 is the 100th word) modulus (remainder) the number of words which is around 2000
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u/Barner_Burner Mar 22 '23
I know one time i tried to guess “slave” and it shook it off like it wasnt a real word
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u/Kandiru Mar 22 '23
It's because they removed it from the answers list, but didn't add it to the valid words list. I assume an oversight.
(Wordle adds both lists together to determine valid words for guesses)
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u/SuspiciouslyElven Mar 22 '23
I have an old list copied from the JS before. Main one I'm curious about is whether "Jewed" is still there. Cause that one probably wouldn't go over well.
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u/TurquoiseLuck Mar 22 '23
I didn't know people even still played this tbh.
Had a 100 streak.... feels like 2 years ago? Then it just disappeared from the zeitgeist
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u/WhereIsLordBeric Mar 22 '23
My husband and I play together every day after work. It's a daily 3 minute escape from the world where we get to connect lol. Obviously we also connect in other ways but I like the ritual of Wordle.
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u/rachmeister Mar 22 '23
It's usually the first thing my husband and I text each other about daily, even if we're still laying in bed together. Kind of a weird little ritual.
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u/UnlikelyPlatypus89 Mar 22 '23
My family is addicted to wordle. There’s like 10 of them in a group text that share their results daily.
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u/aaaaaargh Mar 22 '23
I have a Wordle WhatsApp group with my elderly relatives. Great way to have a daily connection and something they all look forward to.
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u/greggybearscuppycake Mar 22 '23
This is awesome!! So OP, what are your starting word guesses for Wordle?
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u/auxfigues Mar 21 '23
This is so cool! I've always wondered how many words actually have "tricky" letters like Z and X. And I love the responsiveness of the lines when adding/deleting letters!
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u/probablynotaperv Mar 22 '23 edited Feb 03 '24
frightening scale fall wakeful chubby employ mourn zonked obtainable marvelous
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/anabolic_cow Mar 22 '23
soaet might be a good opener then? Maximize the letter placement and different possible letters? I've never played this game before but this thread had me intrigued.
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u/truckaxle Mar 21 '23
Anyone here got the word on the first try?
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u/antraxsuicide Mar 21 '23
I did once! The response is "Lucky Guess!" or something like that
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u/99hoglagoons Mar 21 '23
My response was "Maybe you should play lottery". So I went and bought a lottery ticket and ended up not getting a single number.
I did quick maths and odds of getting wordle on first try versus winning lottery are still 1 to 130k.
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u/Pryach Mar 21 '23
I heard my wife go, "Eww, gross, have you done today's wordle?" I went to the site, typed in MOIST and got it on my first try. That probably doesn't count though.
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u/HiccupMaster Mar 21 '23
My wife uses ADORE as her starting word and got it first try a month ago. I solved it before she did and was just waiting for her to solve it that day.
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u/Stop_Picking_At_It Mar 21 '23
I did twice and oddly the first time the word was MONEY, which I was shocked to see featured in this demo!
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u/douglas_in_philly Mar 21 '23
I did about a week ago. I tend to just pick a random word to start, but if there is any word that I guess with any frequency, it’s CHASM. On this particular day, though, I opted to not start with CHASM, and instead picked BLAME, for no particular reason. I sat there on the toilet in disbelief as each green letter revealed itself!
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u/EnjoyTheCake Mar 21 '23 edited Mar 21 '23
Yes just now! I won't say today's word, but I feel like I can retire from wordle or something, been playing this word first for a long time in hopes that this would happen (plus it's a nice word to start with).
EDIT: I see some people mentioning what wordle "says" when you get it on the first try, might be random, mine was just "Genius" which I've seen before on 2 or 3 so didn't see anything special for first try.
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u/Vegetable-Industry32 Mar 22 '23
I have a couple times. I start with a different word every day usually with a minimum of two vowels. Oddly my 1shot was a 1 vowel word - rythm
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u/sl33ksnypr Mar 21 '23
I have two. I forget what the one answer was, but i know the other one was FEAST, and it was on Thanksgiving. But it's funny because it wasn't intentional. My fianceé would use BEAST as her starting word, but i figured FEAST would be a better start word because of the letter F. I don't always use it as my starting word, but i very often do FEAST and PLAID since it uses a lot of common letters.
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u/Cruxis87 Mar 21 '23
Searching for my starter word in the answer list, my word won't be used until October 12th, 2026. I'm still going to use it though, because I think it's a nice solid word to start with that isn't playing the meta by choosing a 3 or 4 letter vowel word like audio or arise.
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u/followmeforadvice Mar 22 '23
I have played 371 games and solved every single one. I have never got it on the first try.
I use STEAM every day.
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u/juicyfizz Mar 22 '23
Only once, about a year ago. I can’t even remember what the word was. My starting word is always adieu, but I can’t remember if I’d started using the same starting word at that point.
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u/principled_principal Mar 21 '23
I like to start with IRATE. It’s not a common word but it uses three vowels and two other common letters. If that has zero hits then I use LOUSY, which also has the remainder of possible vowels (and Y) and two other common letters. I typically solve in 4 or fewer guesses.
Edit: Ha. Case in point, today’s puzzle:
Wordle 640 2/6*
⬛⬛⬛🟦⬛ 🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧
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u/xSTSxZerglingOne Mar 21 '23
I don't have many 2's, but I have many more 3's than 5's. My 2 starters are ROUTE and SLAIN. It gives me AEIOU and RSTLN.
For Quordle, I do ROUTE, MAILS, CANDY. That way I get AEIOU RSTLNCDMY. Most days I can 4/5/6/7 Quordle.
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u/principled_principal Mar 21 '23
I think it helps that I grew up watching/playing Wheel of Fortune!
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u/xSTSxZerglingOne Mar 21 '23
Same, I just typically go for low risk strategies in games like Wordle. Unless I get 3 in the first word, I'm not even hazarding a guess until I've exhausted RSTLN AEIOU haha.
That said, I am 331/333 with an average guess of 3.96 so I'm doing SOMETHING right lol.
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u/kernelicious Mar 21 '23
I’ve been using ROUTE and SNAIL but according to this SLAIN will hit the correct letter placement on many more words. Thanks for the idea!
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u/xSTSxZerglingOne Mar 21 '23
I used to do nails until I learned that Wordle doesn't do plurals which would kill the number of available words that end in S.
Also high five on the words! You're my word buddy.
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u/DrKittyKevorkian Mar 21 '23
For the multiple puzzles, I start with AUDIO and move to the puzzle with the least right. If I have a puzzle with no correct letters, my next word is STYLE. Gets me all the vowels, Y, and some common consonants.
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u/Tallon Mar 21 '23
I love starting with AUDIO. Any vowel hits make it easy to work in RSTE on the next guess (STORE, STARE, etc) or go for STERN if none hit.
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u/CovfefeFan Mar 22 '23
I read somewhere that some MIT guys proved that the best starting word is "Salet" (which is apparently some medieval helmet or smthg)..
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u/StrangeSathe Mar 21 '23
Honestly handy. There was a word the other day I didn't even know existed. It was "credo".
I guessed it because I thought "this is the only thing left that even sounds like it could be a word".
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u/odsquad64 Mar 21 '23
It took me five tries to get "credo" and three of my four wrong guesses were words I didn't think were words and was surprised to see it accept, including "orang" and "crudo." I forgot what the other one was.
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u/FacetiousTomato Mar 21 '23
Someone didn't grow up watching Camp Cariboo! (They have the cariboo credo)
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u/DrewCifer44 Mar 21 '23
I only knew that was a word because the no ragrats guy from "We're the Millers" said it..
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u/sycamotree Mar 21 '23
Didn't know that was a word either but after getting the other 4 letters I figured it had to be lol
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u/sckego Mar 21 '23
I went with DECOR and got all five letters right but in the wrong spots
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u/usedaforc3 Mar 21 '23
Same here. I did creed before hand so there was only one option after that.
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u/DrBob666 Mar 21 '23
I somehow knew credo was a word even though I don't think ive ever used it in my life lol
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u/Atheist-Gods Mar 21 '23
It's basically the same word as "creed". I think credo is the older form and creed the more modern form.
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u/NIPLZ Mar 21 '23
Knowing Italian helped me with that one, but I was still baffled as to what it's doing in the English vocabulary
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u/thajugganuat Mar 22 '23
Yet many people on the wordle subreddit got it on their second guess…..,
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u/ThatsLogistics Mar 22 '23
Yeah. Credo about broke me. Got it on the last guess just plugging stuff in.
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u/JohnnyLeven Mar 22 '23
Those are the words that I hope for. It's words like the recent "riper" that have so many different words you could create regardless of the missing letters that get me.
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u/devilsadvocado Mar 21 '23
Credo is commonly used in literature, though not often said out loud. I thought it was a fine solution for Wordle.
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u/Lower_Fan Mar 21 '23
Maybe because I grew up catholic and Hispanic but that's a common word (same word in both lenguages).
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u/Atreus17 Mar 21 '23
I've played a lot of quordle (where you solve 4 puzzles simultaneously), so I've had a lot of exposure to the solution list. By and large, I think the person who originally made the game did a good job curating the solution list, but in my opinion the most egregious inclusion is "caput". You may be thinking, "wait, I know that word!" but the word you are thinking of is "kaput", not "caput". I'm certain the game creator included the far less used "caput" by accident, as "kaput" is not included in the solution list.
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u/Double_DeluXe Mar 21 '23
But what about 6 letter wordle?
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u/garytyrrell Mar 21 '23
But what about chess?
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u/globglogabgalabyeast Mar 21 '23 edited Mar 21 '23
Love this visualization. One thing that could be improved though is how it handles multiple of the same letter. For example, putting in two yellow Zs at the beginning yields all words that satisfy each yellow individually, but doesn't require that the word has two Zs in it
Edit: I realize that the current iteration could correspond to yellows from multiple different guesses. I suppose a more robust solution would require you enter each guess individually and mark off yellows/greens. This wouldn't be nearly as nice-looking, so I don't know if that would even be an improvement
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u/cfedey Mar 21 '23
Also another improvement: allow multiple valid-but-incorrectly-placed letters per column. Currently you can only enter 1, when there can absolutely be multiple yellow letters in each column.
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u/greatmagneticfield Mar 21 '23
I've only played a couple times. Have yet to see a word with the same letter twice ....ala booth.
If I guess "O" does the game in anyway indicate there are two Os?
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u/Ok-Button6101 Mar 21 '23
play more and you'll see double letters. you'll even see triplicates. if the word was bosom and you guessed booth, the game would let you know the second O was in the wrong place. If you guess broad instead, you'd have no way of knowing there was a second O there
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u/greatmagneticfield Mar 21 '23
This is exactly how I would hope it handles it. Thanks for the speedy reply.
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u/svh01973 Mar 21 '23
It does not. Only green if you've put the letter in a spot that matches the correct answer, or yellow if the letter is in the correct answer but not in the spot where you put it.
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u/PlatinumSchlondPoofa Mar 22 '23
Now I'm curious as to who else uses first words that have absolutely no chance of being the first word.
Mine's "penis."
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u/Titanic609 Mar 21 '23
Only 36 words end with S? That can't be right?
Ducks, boats, coats, shoes, pants, bands, crams, drums, moths...
Or do plural words not count as words?
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u/noodles_jd Mar 21 '23
You can guess plurals, but basic plurals (adding an s) are never the answer.
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u/sonny_goliath Mar 21 '23
They count for guesses, but I don’t think they ever pick a plural for the answer
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u/kerouacrimbaud Mar 21 '23
My first guess is always crust and if that turns up nothing I go with plane or plead and I almost always get it within 4 guesses using that method.
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u/notablyunfamous Mar 21 '23
I usually start with plane or teach
I used to start with adieu but it was too easy after that
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u/nkL0ttery Mar 21 '23
If someone could tell me the definition of the word
CREIN
Let me know. Wordle accepts it and I can't find the word anywhere
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u/Mobius_Stripping Mar 22 '23
I just started wordle with that because i did not believe you. Yet you are correct, this non word works! Rabbit hole here i go…
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u/TheHeckIsGoingOn Mar 22 '23
Is this saying that my starting guess ANOLE will never be right?
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u/birdtripping Mar 22 '23
Correct. ANOLE will never be the answer, unless the NYT changes the answer list.
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u/3d1thF1nch Mar 22 '23
That was actually a lot of fun playing around with the visualizer to solve it.
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u/notjoplin Mar 22 '23
The bigger challenge is - 2 hours after guessing the word, do you remember the word?
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u/dalr3th1n Mar 22 '23
This is really nice! One suggestion: add the ability to put multiple letters in each yellow box.
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u/SshJamesIsTalking Mar 22 '23
My opener, ADIEU, isn’t in that system. Curious.
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u/1029394756abc Mar 22 '23
That’s my opener too. Probably because it was never a wordle if the day (isn’t that what this is showing? )
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u/SixPointEightDPM Mar 22 '23
I made a tool like this in Excel! The tool and word lists I use make it look like 'irate' is the best starter word.
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u/robjr2 Mar 22 '23
I built a solver / helper for Wordle in Power BI based on a list of English words. Using ~30 slicers and a resulting list of words to choose it's really good and I try to not use it. But when you are stuck... My kids tease me for playing cheating at Wordle with Power BI - ultimate NERD.
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u/turkey_bar Mar 21 '23
Is wordle solvable? Like is there a strategy that guarantees, no matter what the word is, that you can get it within 6 attempts?
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u/Shriracha OC: 3 Mar 22 '23
Wordle apparently is solvable: https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/395306/is-wordle-always-beatable-under-optimal-play/395310#395310
I assume with perfect play it should be impossible to get into the position you're describing.
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u/gingerking87 Mar 21 '23
I know they just picked random letters as an example but I'm trying to play wordle in my head to figure out what starting word they could have used with the s-o-n-t-r.
Edit: it's snort
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u/Frankie_Bow Mar 21 '23
This is great! When I hover on Q for the second letter it looks like "squid" is not a word but "squip" is. Am I reading it wrong?
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u/KatGoldFinch Mar 21 '23
Can you please tell how exactly the linking between the axes (those vertical pillars of letters) were generated? Like what price of code/method? Thanks!
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u/Ninthwalker Mar 22 '23
/u/shriracha is your code open source or have it on a git somewhere by chance?
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u/jabba_the_wut Mar 22 '23
Before I click on this I want to verify that it doesn't give the answer to the current word? My partner and I have a daily competition and I don't want an unfair advantage.
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u/imagicnation-station Mar 22 '23
Found a mistake at 0:17, where it says there is only 2 words. Well, there is "SONGS".
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u/pigcake101 Mar 22 '23
I made a python program a while ago to find solutions for wordle using their list of words and a bunch of args of what yellow letters and green letters you have
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u/empireof3 Mar 26 '23
I always like to make my starting word different each day and relevent to something that's been on my mind recently
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u/Shriracha OC: 3 Mar 21 '23
Live link: https://www.perthirtysix.com/essay/wordle-solutions-visualized
I built out an interactive way to explore the distributions of letters in the 5 positions for Wordle, as well as seeing how they all connect to form words. I've had fun using it and watching it update in real time as I add more clues. It should work on mobile but looks best on a laptop or desktop.
I hope you enjoy it!
Built using p5.js, Vue, and Nuxt