Semantle: Can you think like a computer?

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!

Wow, I don't have the patience to come up with 600-800 words, plus I find that my brain gets stuck and just keeps coming up with similar words to the ones I've already guessed, even where they only score like 25. I literally don't think I ever would have gotten today's.

spoiler alert: the word "penis" is slightly closer than the word "university" and slightly further away than "paint."

LOL

Wondering if starting with a seed word - say, the 1000th-closest word - would make the game more appealing.

I’m fascinated by it & can’t wait for the next drop (after having pulled the plug on today’s) but the early stages are a bit of a slog tbh.

I didn’t like the idea of hints, but maybe just a wee one? Say, calling for a hint gets you the word that’s one closer from the target word vs your highest guess, like if you had word 950 and you called for a hint you would get word 951. (And if you were stuck on 999, it would give you 998.) One per day.

I got it in 7.

well, at least that was the point I launched my computer over the balcony and put on Peacemaker instead

86 today. I find there's a certain point when I just start entering words I know aren't going to be right.

gave up yesterday. not sure i ever would have gotten it. even after i knew the answer, it was hard to come up with similar words.

then got super lucky today and got it in 21.

84 today, gave up yesterday. I like the new addition of numbering the words and having the most recent guess come up at the top!

Think I'm getting the hang of this, took me 80.

Just trying today. I have the 'guess number' but the similarity isn't sorted by highest for me (Firefox). So it's not sorted by either similarity or guess number.

oh sorry I get it. Most recent goes at the top no matter what but everything else sorted by similarity.

Got it in 60 - are we all getting the hang of it or was it just easier today?