Semantle: Can you think like a computer?

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.

lol, my first attempt and I just got a slight frisson of excitement getting a 20.16 after 20 odd much stone colder attempts, but I can see how the hunt could become addictive.

At the moment my top guess, at 28.01, is 'penis'.

Which I've just beaten with 'breast' (29.84)

which is quite funny knowing the answer, and that the word that really got me on the chase was helicopter at 22.36.

75 today. Love it when those green bars pop up.

OK, clitoris at 30.80. And yet I still can't shake the feeling I'm barking up the wrong tree

Yeah, it's hard to know where to go next after you've found clitoris.

Onward and upward, boring old kidney at 33.76

OK, got it at 77.

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

― Grandpont Genie, Tuesday, February 15, 2022 9:52 AM bookmarkflaglink

I think the bit where i started closing in was the difference between helicopter 22.36 and airplane 17.82, which caused me, after some mechanical guesses, to go for hospital

Interesting to note that both ill and sick were respectively 11.27 and 9.82.

Say if the hidden text stuff is annoying! but i find it all interesting enough to want to discuss some of the process!

my first top 1000 hitdiplomat 29.06 sent me on a bit of a wild goose chase but I hit pay gold with doctor 67.93. I must be good at this because it give me a very high score!

by the time those NYT cunts have put wordle behind a paywall I'm hoping to be averaging regular sub 100 scores on this.

36 today, ended with an incredibly satisfying series of three logical guesses that correctly closed the circle. david this is the best game

Got this one in 14. Also had a couple lucky early guesses.

got today's in 30, made a leap from mechanic to the secret word

Yeah my son beat my score today by a few guesses, he came to the answer by a different route though. my guesses went from star to celebrity to leader and then other notable types of people while he found it with the multiple body parts to anatomy to doctor etc.

I gave up on yesterdays because my 4 closest guesses were (iirc) PERHAPS, NEITHER, uhh maybe SILKILY??!, and EITHER. None of them were going to get me to the answer, in retrospect.

*cracks fingers* let's try today's.

Today's in 64. It took me a while to start scoring, and then when I did all mine were eye related, so I was in a similar ballpark but far too specific!

I did give up yesterday but only because I had to go to bed after having the page up all day to try new things - yes, I am one of those people who took "it's too hard" as a challenge. I got green scores at 25, 990 at 54, and then pages upon pages of green, very few of which were related to the answer in a way I would understand. My highest match was IRONICALLY, ffs. I was working on a few different strands, one was conjunctions and old-timey constructions (I had a lot of fun with inasmuches and heretofores), one was a sort of "quirky" adverb strand (QUIXOTICALLY and NEBULOUSLY and BIZARRELY all scored green), and I got a few that could theoretically have led me to the answer (SUBSEQUENTLY and CONSEQUENTLY), however more obvious matches like AFTERWARDS and LASTLY were cold, so I wasn't looking in that direction.

Honestly, I love this game despite the frustration at machine-calculated relations.

I had pretty much the same strands, emil.y! Less exhaustively than yours, I imagine, tho I even ran through all the contractions thinking maybe that was what made it "difficult."

I mean...SILKILY???! lol it's inexplicable.

Got it in 144! Possibly my best day yet tho I maybe took a funny route.