Semantle: Can you think like a computer?

It would be really interesting to know the optimal, say, six words to start with to narrow down the possibilities.

107 words ... AND I used a thesaurus. The thing that broke it open for me was actually just free-associating. Not sure how I got from WHOOPSIE to ERROR but the answer came relatively quickly after that.

*************SPOILERS IN POST ABOVE SORRY*****************

will try to get a mod to fix

midnight utc it says

got stuck on 940 jigsaw and 952 difficult, eventually started typing in random words from the top of the page! got to 999 but still had to hit the thesaurus, maybe it would have come to me eventually. take home lesson: words in the mid 900s are not necessarily at all helpful.

(got it in 147. also confused by lukas' post as those two words are nowhere near the answer.)

97 but I thought I was going to have to give up even with the help of a thesaurus. Got 4 words over 900 reasonably quickly but stalled out hard after that.

This game is going to ruin my life. Which is a compliment!

lol the mod got creative with my post

Ha!

81 today!
I hit on 932/1000 but other synonyms didn't seem to get that high at all. (There is one missing from the dictionary btw, it didn't recognise marvellous .) Once I got in the final ballpark I didn't look up any synonyms (I don't really consider that cheating if it jogs your memory, as unless you're really close it's unlikely to be one of those maybe?) I got the 997 and 998 before hitting on it.

Oh just realised it was probably a UK/US spelling thing in the 'missing' word.

Today was my first time doing this. It took 56 goes to get the word. I didn't use a thesaurus.

I have no interest in playing Wordle. I think this is probably because of people posting their scores on Twitter, which was annoting and how I first heard of it, rather than any intrinsic qualities of the game itself. This, however, is great and I plan to play again. Thanks, David!

I gave up on today's and had genuine difficulty understanding why my relatively "closest" word (27.14) was any closer to the correct word than many of the much further away words. It seems like until you get a much "closer" guess, the reasons are not apparent for "closeness"

Even so, some of the “closer” words are genuinely mystifying.

Sometimes a word will be close in one form but far away in a different form, e.g. let's say cheater vs cheated vs cheating vs cheat could all have wildly different closeness scores.

yes, and after i gave up i tried some synonyms of the winner that were "cold," while others were very close. and i couldn't find where my closest guess connected to the winner. anyway i got bored of wordle pretty quickly and this is way better.

Oof, today was a tricky one for me. Took me 127 and I did resort to thesaurus cheating at one point. It did give me an important semantic turn that I probably wouldn't have taken without it, though. I was stuck on 'hard', 'tough' etc, thesaurus gave me the idea to try 'critical', which then gave me a new line of enquiry.

I would say over ten of my tries were me getting frustrated and typing in things like 'shit', 'fuck', 'death', 'kill', so maybe I could claim 117 instead, heh.

I must be at a hundred guesses now and I can’t get any closer than a similarity score just shy of 21. FML

Yeah, this is killing me today.

Similarity stuck at 44 and I cannot think of any more synonyms

got it finally. only took me 511 guesses.

I've got similarity of 24/26/34, all are closely related ... and no idea where to go next.

Yeah this one was brutal.

probably put a couple hundred guesses into this fella during a boring work meeting and got no higher than 566 (or so) (my only “getting warmer@ guess also)

then had another go at home and got it in 8

have often found this with cryptic crosswords, where a change of scene will reshuffle the neurons and offer new insights

this game is impossible and makes no sense

stuck on 950/1000 and can't think where to go next, have free-associated my head off.

I've got a few 'warm' words, highest is 872/1000 and I'm also stuck. Might go back to it.

I've guessed 386 words ;_;

Oh God I just hit on it!

My highest guess beforehand kind of had two relevant meanings to it

Got there in 70.

gave up, this game is too hard for me

ok someone give me a hint > 950 (this would be a good feature to add!)

I’m at 936/1000, which is so annoyingly close but I’m totally stuck.

Yesterday’s wasn’t so bad, got it in 82

This game is maddening.

i got stuck at 673/1000 with domains which i thought was close, but that was the first one i've done, and after giving up and seeing the answer, i realise now i was miles from the secret word. the progress bars gave me false hope. can't see that i'd have guessed.

I didn't even get into the 900s. I browsed a few wiki pages for some of the words I had which gave me inspiration. No it's not cheating... (Most of the key terms I'd already tried).
Also I think it's key to try different variations of words e.g. (not related to today's as far as I know) literate, literature, literal. Some are cold when others are warm.

I gave up after about 350 guesses. I can obviously see the connection between the answer and my closest guess license but i'm not sure how i could have got from one to the other without external inspiration - and I'd already tried all the nearest synonyms - or other than sheer luck guess one of the closer words. Still, I'll come back tomorrow for more punishment.

first time ever getting it today after playing for about a week... in 69 guesses O_o

of my guesses, the one deemed literally furthest away make seems imo like it should be closer to the secret word? but im not (yet) a computer so idk ~

139 today. early guesses in the 10s were all small things -- pea, corn, dust -- which led me astray.

johnny fever, i thought the same thing. i hit on manufacture which was one of my warmest guesses, but your word got nowhere.

I'll get as far as 30 guesses before I can't resist and give up ha.

i like the concept but the space is too vast and the goal too opaque. restricting to 5 letter nouns might help

makes me think a fun application of GPT-3 would be to play 21 questions with it

I like the idea of the long game, chipping away at it throughout random times in the day though.

Today turned out to be brutally difficult -- it's just stuck off in its own arm of the semantic space. Sorry about that. Maybe tomorrow will be easier. Or maybe not!

I still have yesterday's loaded and haven't solved it yet. Now worried about trying today's.

What's happening to the Similarity column? It's all out of order. I can't tell what's working and what's not.

I’m seeing similarity sorted properly, but with your most recent guess at the top, which is a very welcome feature!