Semantle: Can you think like a computer?

I have never yet guessed anything that wasn't a "cold"

Today’s was maddening for me - got thrown off by my first warm guess that led me in the completely wrong direction. Got it in 400 guesses lol

gave up again despite having a few guesses in the 99x range - these were all pretty unhelpful and sent had ne the exact wrong direction

Same. I was all backasswards on this one.

Got 3 words in the 99Xs before 40, then just a futile rooting around thereafter. I don’t know how I would have ever got round to it.

Got it in 200 but should've been quicker, I got lots that suggested parts of a bird but then I got 'nose' higher than 'beak' and futzed around with facial features for ages.

stuck again, on 998, 995 and 994

after giving up on my first gl yesterday got it in 26 today.

56 for me. Best score I've had so far, but only just.

Same as ledge. Had it down to two or three similar words, but the opposite nature misled me for a long time. Took 238 I think

Just going to apologize in advance for today's. It's stupidly hard for no good reason.

128 guesses and still cold ;_;

Got to 999/1000 on turn 377 and I'm giving up for now.

I'm in the 990s...

I got 991 after 28 guesses, 996 after 92, 999 with some cheating after 188. I've basically given up though I haven't clicked 'give up' yet.

i gave up and honestly don't think i could've gotten it anyway. the closest word to the answer i could think of only had a similarity of 22! (ie am still not a computer)

I gave up and even knowing the word couldn't get something close to come up.

Yesterday I got close with “beak” but then didn’t get a chance to finish. Not sure “tail” ever would have occurred to me.

David I'm curious what you're doing to try to remove stupidly hard words?

I am manually looking at the top thirty nearest words and seeing if they seem near to me. I just did this manually for the next week, and I'll probably build a UI to make it easy for the future.

I cheated. The word is a (an) adjective while most of the words I found near it were conjunctions or adverbs, i think.

I gave up based on this thread, but probably shouldn’t have. I was closer than I thought.

I'll probably give up today, but I wondered if the word was hard because it was uncommon (technical language, for example) or because the nearest words are so far away?

Kim, same here.

I gave up, I lolled. Despite having four out of the top ten closest words and 20 of the top 100 I do not feel I was in any way close to getting it. I tried the first half dozen words that sprang to mind after the answer and only one of them - an antonym - was close, and only 589/1000.

xp to kinder, i was wondering the same - it is not an uncommon word by any means.

I had subsequent and second in my top three, so it might have happened!

xp to ledge: same. I gave up despite having 999, 996, 993 and 991, none of which seem to bear any relation to the secret word.

Incidentally, I likewise had those ones.

After a billion guesses (600?) I had 996-999 and quite a few others at 980+ but was nowhere near getting that answer. Oof! But I knew what I was getting into with the disclaimer and I did decide to read it as a challenge...

I had resorted to more or less entering everything that was the same part of speech as 998/999 and/or in a similar slightly literary/legalese/oldfashioned register, but the answer wasn't the same part of speech and not so flowery either

Also, my first interpretation of "stupidly hard" was that an abbreviation or something else weird had crept in, so I tried a bunch of abbreviations, random two-letter strings, German words* and html/javascript keywords, and quite a few were accepted as guesses. Hope they don't come up as answers! (OK, they won't, because David is vetting answers from now on. Thanks, David!)

* The German words were because I was getting highish scores on a seam of words which are a bit archaic in English, e.g. thereupon, thereby, etc, but German uses the equivalent a lot - so it seemed easier to think of German ones, which I typed in out of desperation, and dabei, darauf, darüber are all in the dataset, along with a lot of personal pronouns. Not that any of this matters since they seem to score too low to rank against an English target word & it won't affect anyone's guesses, but it was interesting to me.

I'm scoring just under 30 and my top 4 words don't have anything in common with each other.

This better be hilarious.

Got it in 134 guesses :)

got it in 53 guesses.

no idea how I stumbled on the right path, but once I found the common link it was matter of elimination

anybody who was playing more than two hours ago, though, I had a different word than you. it changed at 7 pm ET/6 pm CT

have lost interest in semantle

i coulda done it in under 50 in my first two guesses weren't "poop" and "pee"

I hate this game

I got it in 45. Better!

My god Kim what does the inside of your brain look like?

320 guesses and I'm up to 991/1000 but I've danced all around my highest scoring answers and I'm out of ideas.

got it in 166 today - fluked a jump from word #689 to THE WORD - happily all "warm" guesses were in fact pointing me in the right direction and my mind didn't seize up

I spent 5 minutes trying to guess answers after I knew the word and couldn't get anything else in the top 10.

i tried this and got a couple in the top 10 - it's an interesting exercise! some words I would've imagined being pretty adjacent were way down the list

Dave informs me his user base is up to 76k?!?!?

I solved Semantle #17 in 22 guesses. Guess 8 was "hospital", very lucky.

Nice! 111 for me today, def easier than yesterday

I solved Semantle #17 in 51 guesses.

yeah this one seemed easier (not complaining)

121, took 63 guesses to get anything green then i took the roundabout route of professions, military ranks, scientists, psychiatrists etc, medical professions so I could have taken a shortcut there, but felt like a satisfying solve.

22 today. It's fascinating closing in on a vector.

115 today. I agree with Fizzles. It's great closing in once you're in the right ballpark.