You can use also other information gain values to choose the next word, such as minimizing the expected or worst case number of words remaining.

There were some fun ideas that can be brought from Mastermind. In mastermind, it can be shown that it’s sometimes better to play a ‘word’ that’s inconsistent with the gathered knowledge in order to obtain better knowledge (refs on Wikipedia i think)

That’s what I do when I play Wordle. My first 3 guesses are words with as many different vowels and consonants as possible. Only on the fourth guess I try to get the word right.

And the optimal thing to do (according to some objective function) is to plan ahead as far as possible, which is exponentially expensive but may be feasible in Wordle

Should we make a competition? :smile: @spdegabrielle ;)

Yes let’s .

As with all racket community competitions I propose • you must use a racket language (relaxed interpretation so Rosette, RacketScript, Urlang, Pyret or your own language are all permitted) • Submissions are the same licence as Racket • Participants will get showcased or racket fora and social media winners get a badge on their GitHub and a sticker • Criteria for wordle solve competition: must be able to solve sometimes (100% desirable but not necessary) • bonus points for: smallest solver, solving without a dictionary, solving visualisation, language design (if you make a DSL) • Peoples choice vote at end. • The respect and admiration of your peers

(Collaboration/collusion absolutely encouraged)

I’ll buy the stickers and post them out

I’m eagerly waiting for someone to propose a solver that guesses the random number generator of the checker :smile:

Rules to be discussed/refined?

Will you or someone write a checker then?

No they are grown ups they can write their own checker

> Rules to be discussed/refined? > Yes why not

Should we agree on a common input format, or do you prefer to leave this open (e.g. GUI)?

For anyone who wants it, I extracted the actual wordlist that the game uses from the JS on the site.

The actual game uses has two wordlists: one that is considered valid solutions and another that are valid guesses, but will never be the answer (e.g. “aahed”). I haven’t split them up here to make it more interesting for everyone, though.

I’ll note one other fun thing my friends and I do to make the puzzle more interesting (since there are very optimal first guesses) is to always use yesterday’s answer as the initial guess for the new puzzle. Makes it interesting :wink:

> Should we agree on a common input format, or do you prefer to leave this open (e.g. GUI)? I prefer to leave to open: let people use whatever they are comfortable with.

Intrigued by the “solving without a dictionary” idea :) That seems rather difficult.

Should probably divide between easy & hard modes.

+1, although that’s an interesting idea nonetheless

We can do both!?

Hmm… my technique is lacking a bit. I just ran through all 12,971 words in the combined (target/guess) wordle list, and my code currently averages 4.78 guesses. At least now I have a test harness that will give me very accurate feedback on code changes :)

Sure, why not

That’s going to be a tough competition! :smile:

Ok the way I do this is set up a free GitHub org & repo, and add a README.md. I use issues for entries. Entries can be them featured on Racket News, Reddit, discourse, discord and slack.

Please write an announcement in 25 words or less.

The announcement goes in the readme. A copy becomes an announcement topic on discourse that is linked for posting on social media

Will do that tomorrow, unless someone else does it first of course

What’s the word for a coding event that’s less of a competition and more of a gathering?

A hack-jam?

Right. Would that be a better fit?

Or some other format

How about calling it a ‘moot’ it is not perfect but it’s not bad

(looking at def…) I’m not sure. What meaning would you give this?

Halfway between

1. HISTORICAL an assembly held for debate, especially in Anglo-Saxon and medieval times. 2. LAW a mock judicial proceeding set up to examine a hypothetical case as an academic exercise.

It is also used by some youth groups for their gatherings

How about a parliamentary session? :sweat_smile:

Sounds like a pretty casual thing if you look at the UK :smile:

Not sure about moot though: https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/moots/\|https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/moots/

Or Hackarty, for hacking party?

I like that

Cool

A wordle solver hackarty?

Yep!

Timeframe?

End of feb?

How long?

End at end of feb

Too long ?

Starting now? I think that’s okay. People are busy

I feel like two months was too long for creative racket

More would be too much

Yes a month is about right

Plus people will delay if they think they have time

Wow - I think I found a serious problem w/ Wordle ! I found a word in the target list (i.e. the puzzle words) that wasn’t in the guess list (i.e. the list of acceptable words you can use for a guess). Maybe the github user I got the target list accidentally added one, but if not, I think that means that on that day, no one will get the right answer! :)

I better check the wordle site directly…

Scratch that - I think I messed up the guess word list the other day. Nothing to see here…