Defend The Indefensible: Wordle

Yeah, the original WordleBot "knew" the list of possible solutions but since the launch of WordleBot 2.0 it no longer does https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/17/upshot/wordle-wordlebot-new.html

iirc it’s impossible to have an average score above 3.2 or something in the long run (based on posts where people simulate thousands of wordles with optimal guesses)?

good point. i certainly don’t remember, though i wonder if they’ll slowly start seeding previously used words back in as we get closer to using up the original word list

are you sure that wordlebot knows the true word list?

No, I'm certain they don't! I mean, they probably know the 15,000 "every five letter word" list, but I didn't mean to imply that they know the word list. Like I say, it might not exist, Tracy Bennett might just pick a new word every day. Though Wikipedia suggests otherwise?

She made adjustments to Wordle, which was a new acquisition by the Times from its creator, creating a variety of level-of-difficulty throughout a week's puzzles and varying the lexical and semantical types of words from day to day, adding and removing words from the database, limiting the inclusion of words that have too many identical four-letter patterns in common with other words, avoiding words that are spelled differently in other versions of English, and experimenting with a themed entry on Thanksgiving Day. She considers the implications of words related to current news and researches possible offensive alternative uses of words. She has received pushback from players about themed entries.

Hrm, worth quoting the Worldlebot FAQ, which seems more recent than those references:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/16/upshot/wordlebot-faq.html

The original Wordle game ran off a 2,309-word “solution list,” but that list is no longer the official reference. There have now been published solutions that did not appear on the original list — like BALSA and KAZOO — and a handful of words on the list that are unlikely to pass the scrutiny of Times editors.

ah ok i don’t fully understand what you’re saying here then

It's doing that because the developers went through the 15000 possible words and cut them down to 4500 (as they point out in their FAQ, there's already been answers that are missing from the original 2300 list). And so that's part of the edge that they have, that their algorithm is tilted towards those words. But instead of saying that, they say "based on what I've learned playing Wordle", creating an image of some War Games situation where it's speed-played through all of the words in the real Wordle dictionary (which may not exist)

my understanding is there’s two lists wordlebot knows

1. a list of permissible guess words that is smaller than the list of permissible guess words we have access to (although they occasionally tweak it to allow it to use more obscure words as e.g. second guess)

2. a list of permissible solution words that is larger than the actually existing list of solution words

wordlebot doesn’t know the list of solution words, but it knows not all words in 2 are solution words, and as it plays it updates a model of which word is more likely to be a solution word. that’s how i interpret it saying “what i’ve learned plying wordle”—i.e. it learned by playing all games so far

Is the full list of daily solutions (as currently stands) still held in the JavaScript if you peek? I obviously don't want to look into it for fear of spoilers but I know that well into the NYT era I would be so impatient that I'd be playing a day ahead of everyone else by just changing the date on my iPhone. And in the past you could upload a grid to WordleBot that came from an unofficial "make your own Wordle" site and it would recognise it and say "this looks like a board for game 1560" or whatever even if Wordle itself was only up to game 800 or whatever.

lol that’s dedicated hacking

If I click "did you beat the bot?" and then "read my analysis of today's wordle", the bot gives skill and luck levels for my choices, which I don't generally believe at all. I'm often surprised to find that my skill level is below the NYT avg.

When I guess a word in 3 or 4, it is sometimes because after one or two words, depending on my success, I can work out as many outcomes as possible, write them down, consider which letters are most used, and choose a second or third word that I know is not the solution but which eliminates as many other words as possible. Sometimes I'm successful, not always.

Then the bot often says something inane and gives me a low skill score, like today after my second choice - "this guess wasn't my favorite, but you lucked out! You narrowed it down to two remaining words" - which would be insulting if it wasn't so funny.

i think the way they do it is skill is calculated a priori (expectation of how few words remain over all possible solution words) and luck is how much further your guess was ex post than that prior average. so it should reward you with a high skill score for that procedure. might be you missed some possible words when making the list (i do something similar when i have time, it’s hard to be exhaustive)

But I don't see how my skill is less than the NYT average, or how their determination that I'm lucky is actually because of luck.

From the bot it seems like the NYT players' score averages are amazing for this, with a very high skill level

im with you on the nyt average thing. pisses me off to see how close i am to the average whenever i think im on an absolute hot streak. i think part of the problem is the way they normalize the scores there’s very little variance, so you might have a skill 1 or 2 points higher than nyt average but be at the 90th percentile. at least that’s what i tell myself..

A terrible 5 today with three attempts to guess just the first and final letter.

If you can recall any past solutions, until 2027 your chances should slowly improve.

What is this sorcery?! I can rarely remember yesterday's word

Ha ha - my recall can't claim to be very good but some more distinctive words do stick in my head. And it helps that I'm in a WhatsApp group for it with three pals as the associated discussion might help to lodge things a bit better.

I hate it when my first word leaves me with an A in the middle and an E at the end, which has happened at least a few times in recent memory. No matter how many consonants or vowels I think of to add to the second choice, there are so many possibilities that answer is always elusive

yesterday's was a close SHAVE - on my fifth guess I had SHA_E, with V M D K and L still available

Yeah, I had SHAME on my second guess, but it took me all 6 to get to SHAVE argh.

I got that one in 3 which is about the only time Wordle has been kind to me in the last few months

Back to 4 today sigh

Can I complain about Connections in this thread too? Because I have an issue with today’s.

i love to gripe about connections, let's hear yours!

xp hero?
I've only recently started playing it but today's was the first I didn't get in time. for a UKer some of the options are a bit baffling.

Yes, hero. That’s a sandwich (in parts of the US) not a type of bread.

noun. a large sandwich, usually consisting of a small loaf of bread or long roll cut in half lengthwise and containing a variety of ingredients, as meat, cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes.

Notice it doesn’t say “usually consisting of a small hero,” because that’s completely wrong.

my american colleague says "an american regionalism... very New York. “Would you like that on a hero or a roll?”"

Which may explain why a NYT puzzle setter would think that’s well known. I’m in Minnesota and have never heard it.

There are definitely regionalisms in terms of words and associations in Connections! Idk I consider both to be part of the assumed cultural capital… as in, even if you don’t live in/near NYC, you should know these NYC-isms… the “purple” ones also assumed certain cultural capital

The descriptions for the connections are often not how I would articulate the connection…

my american colleague says "an american regionalism... very New York. “Would you like that on a hero or a roll?”"

idk, what about a sub or a hoagy?

jfc it was bad enough having to know about american sports!

i get it, it's basically revenge on all those cricketing terms in uk cryptic crosswords.

Xp … yes a sub and a hoagy and a hero and a grinder… I see as different names for the same thing?

Xp ledge … it took me way too long to figure out what a “spag bol” was … i thought it referred to a bowl of spaghetti

See I would consider the hero bread to be a kind of roll!

That’s my issue with this. It’s a hero roll, some people are just skipping the “roll” part. “Do you want that sandwich made as a roll or a hero?” The bread itself is not a hero. But whatever. Sandwiches, that’s where I’m a Viking!

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

But it’s the description of the connection that is the problem, as opposed to being able to identify a hero as a type of sandwich that is connected to the other three terms as “sandwich related “

At least that’s my issue

I love all of the fronting as if the UK doesn't pack five different bread-roll-based shibboleths in an area the size of NYC.

yeah exactly; meanwhile the UK has more words for "bread roll" than any other word in the English language and this didn't have any of them

How many ilxors playing connections got the purple one first today? I am guessing a lot of you did too

yes

Yes

yep

Haha, yes!

I got the green and yellow no problem but couldn't get the blue and purple! I swore loudly when I rushed into getting it wrong so I could see the solution. I'm almost ashamed to show my face around here tbh.

I didn’t believe purple was what it was and did yellow first

yes, I got purple first as well

For me the tipoff was seeing Nicks and Mercury. I always see if I can figure out what to do with the oddball words.

yup

I did wonder if GALL was also part of the group though