Tomtit in the tilth -- the NY TIMES SPELLING BEE thread

xp i’m ORATE, just because these seem like the most common letters. S doesn’t seem to show up that much (i’ve never seen a plural).

Omg Leee, ROUTE is genius.

Just got my first ever "solved in two" moment by starting with ROUTE.

Thought process: Only U was green. So with R O T E out of commission, my next candidate letters are I N S H L D, but I have noticed that I tend to forget M exists, so tried SLUMP on a whim. Damn.

Like if I had xIRES all green, I'd probably guess WAFTS before trying to complete so I knew what my prefix was

this is a great strategy.

splitting hairs but i don't think ETAION SHRDLU works for a corpus of only five letter words, i read somewhere it was more like SEAORILTNU (but this may be questionable if no plurals); i go with AROSE.

You are right, ledge. I have heard STARLINE suggested but what you write is persuasive

Spelling Bee can be a bit of a slog, a drag, a well-known drag but the Wordle is just what the doctor ordered.

Whenever I lose my streak it's always because I've got 4/5 letters on the fifth guess. I ~could~ do a test guess to cover some possibilities for that missing letter. But I don't. I stab on guess 6 and stab on guess 7 and choke

My last streak was lost to xIVES. My RAISE -> MOUND -> LINTY hadn't covered any possibilities for the prefix. (W)ives, (F)ives, (G)ives, (H)ives, (J)ives all untested. (L)ives and (D)ives were eliminated as possibilities. I had two guesses and I don't remember which ones I guessed (probably WIVES and JIVES because I'm stupid) and which one it actually was (probably GIVES, ugh)

I actually don't recall if I did RAISE MOUND LINTY on that one now that I think about it :( Typically with three clues on the first round I deviate. Anyway whatever who GIVES a shit

Guess 7?

BTW, the tactic described above is actually outlawed in HARD MODE!
click the gear at the right corner

(got today in three)

(yeah, me too)

Dumb question but ive been playing wordle for weeks and i cant work out how people are pasting those blank results? Not that I would, but i see no option for it on the site.

there's a "share" button on the final results

Oh is it only six guesses ok!

tech spoiler:
the answers are in the source code, ALL OF THEM, he's hard coded the entire list in order, in plain text. it's a strange decision. also contains a list of all allowable words and the distribution of letters in those is slightly different from normal English. there were two uncommon words that used the top 5 letters from this distribution, but i forget what they were (and they were useless against today's word)

With regard to the spelling bee, I’ve started using the hints after I’ve exhausted my first run or two and want to chisel away, don’t know how people feel about that/postingfromzing

i do that too so i think it’s fine

Yeah I generally only go to the forum / grid after I reach Genius on my own.

It's not a hard and fast rule, though, there have been days when I only got to Great or Amazing all by myself, and went to the grid because I was out of ideas.

As I think I've said before, the task of finding, say, a 6-letter word beginning with PE is a very different task from just staring at hexagons hoping for a miracle. The process of elimination is itself a puzzle, where you're narrowing down possibilities and crossing off letters where you have found everything.

The VERY last resort is to just go look at the answers on nytbee.com and see the things I just could never have gotten on my own, like, say TOMMYROT, which I was never gonna get to by guesswork.

tomtit in the [spoiler]

holy canole, i've bagged a 2

Wordle 203 2/6

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The method, which will never work again, was to do the first guess, walk away for 4 hours, and then guess the exact word

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phOW-CZJWT0

there's a "share" button on the final results

There isnt for me. Is it possibly a noscript/adblock thing I wonder.

Oh! god, its on the popup screen and I'd just not noticed lol I am dense.

Bleurgh. I’ve switched to the tactic of fishing in the first two rounds but didn’t like the way it was going. Nearly went for a third round of new letters but didn’t quite have the nerve.

Wordle 204 5/6

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Today I, um, followed my bliss, I mean just typed whatever quasi-strategic words popped into my head, which was enjoyable and converged satisfactorily. Got close on four and clinched it on five.

With regard to the spelling bee is this thread in which we post words we wished were accepted, like VITTLE? I understand why it is isn’t but still.

My friends call it a futilibee when you see a word that you think should be accepted but isn't. WADI, TORY, PHAETON are recent examples

NAPHTHA not being accepted makes me so mad, every time.

today's Wordle was the toughest for me because I'm not clear on the rules for indicating repeated letters. I think I have it figured out now though.

Honestly, half of the fun of the Bee is complaining about included or excluded words.

I am coming to the same conclusion, al"bee"it reluctantly. upthread you will see me expressing irritation with that approach. I am starting to embrace it now

Heh.

Wait, kinder, what do you mean by “indicating repeated letters”?

So say the word was DODGY
If I get _ _ D_Y obviously either of D and Y could be in the remaining blank letters

But if I put A Y D R Y (pretend this is a real word) and the first Y is grey does that mean it's not in the blank letters at all or in another position - because grey is supposed to indicate that letter is not in the word at all (according to the 'how to play') but clearly that's incorrect. So I still wondered if there might be a second Y in one of the other positions, say YEDLY.
I tried something similar today to figure out the 'rules' and I think maybe it treats remaining blank letters as 'the word' so it would be yellow if it was there a second time but in a different position?
I always forget that if they're 'green' they could still be somewhere else in there, anyway.

So sorry yeah I didn't really mean 'indicating repeated letters' - more what I can infer from the colours of the remaining letter guesses given that grey doesn't mean it's not in the word at all if it's already been found. I've only played it a few times so still figuring it out!

i went from a "2 performance" to a 5 rounder today. i thought i had really figured out things. :(

Does it really matter? Seems to be a question of luck.

staring at the crossword puzzle, i asked myself, does it really matter

I'd say no.

@ kinder, yeah if there is a repeated letter in your guess, they'll green one if it's in the correct position, and yellow the other if there is a second occurrence of the same letter; the second letter will be grey otherwise.

So if the solution is PATTY, the guess TOTEM will get you yellow/green, TACIT will get you yellow/yellow.
If the solution is DATUM, the guess TOTEM will get you grey/green, the guess TACIT will get you yellow/grey.

Thanks! That's nice and clear.

Honestly, half of the fun of the Bee is complaining about included or excluded words.

― Rabbit Pen Warren (Leee), Sunday, 9 January 2022 09:02 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I am coming to the same conclusion, al"bee"it reluctantly. upthread you will see me expressing irritation with that approach. I am starting to embrace it now

― nonsensei (Ye Mad Puffin), Sunday, 9 January 2022 09:04 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

there is a longer game within the game - we are meant to slowly figure out who sam is

Intriguing theory. It's like a Where's Waldo or Kit Williams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masquerade_%28book%29.

Sam is interested in birds and Italian food. Has no interest in British politics or chemical compounds. Relatively few modes of preindustrial transport, except for oared craft. No knowledge of the terminology of the age of sail.

Sam likes loanwords but only from certain languages - Spanish but not French; indigenous Americans but not Arabic.

His affection for childish nonsense words indicates that he is either a manchild or a father.

Possibly Jewish, probably not Catholic.

kit Williams was local when i was growing up and one of the places in town used to get their lawn dug up regularly because it featured in the book.

there's still a clock he designed in the arcade in Cheltenham

lol, i had a copy of masquerade as a kid. and theories!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTz1aTIX1u8

absurdle
https://qntm.org/files/wordle/index.html

The mechanics of Absurdle are identical to Wordle, or as close as I can make them. Among other things, they use the same word lists. (There are actually two word lists in Wordle: one is a list of 2,315 words which can appear as answers, and the other is a list of 10,657 rather more obscure words which are allowed as guesses but will never appear as answers.) The major difference is behind the scenes.

Wordle picks a single secret word at the beginning of the game, and then you have to guess it. Absurdle gives the impression of picking a single secret word, but instead what it actually does is consider the entire list of all possible secret words which conform to your guesses so far. Each time you guess, Absurdle prunes its internal list as little as possible, attempting to intentionally prolong the game as much as possible.

Absurdle 8/∞

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Absurdle 10/∞

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oh brother

Absurdle 5/∞

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