Don't Wordle

(dontwordle.com)

241 points by Hbruz07 hours ago

42 comments

  • amiga3865 hours ago
    12935 -&gt; TIZZY (5625) -&gt; OXBOW (2674) -&gt; GRUFF (858) -&gt; MAMMA (195) and I&#x27;ll let you guess the rest but my next choice left 43 words, and I survived with only 4 words possible.<p>The rules not letting use a letter you know isn&#x27;t in the target word drastically cuts your choices, your best bet is to use as few unique letters per word as you can, and as uncommon letters as you can, but as all normal words need vowels you&#x27;ll be forced into only picking a vowel from the target word soon enough. Try to find letters that are in the word as late as possible so you&#x27;re not locked into having to use them.<p>Once you are forced to use letters from the target word, avoid placing them in the right place. Sadly there&#x27;s a rule not letting you use a known letter more than once in a word (once A is known, you can&#x27;t write ALPHA), and a rule for not letting you put a known letter in a place you know it doesn&#x27;t go (so after MAMMA, you can&#x27;t have HALVE because you know there&#x27;s not an A in second place, nor ALPHA because you know there&#x27;s not an A in fifth place).
    • SkiFire133 hours ago
      &gt; Sadly there&#x27;s a rule not letting you use a known letter more than once in a word (once A is known, you can&#x27;t write ALPHA)<p>This is not entirely correct (or at least it&#x27;s worded a bit weirdly).<p>If you know that A goes in a certain place you can still try a word using A more than once. It&#x27;s only once you know that A does not appear twice (because you tried a word containing A twice, and the second A way gray!) then you can no longer use A twice.<p>In your case you tried MAMMA which contained 2 As and the second one gave you the information that there&#x27;s no second A.
      • gpvos1 hour ago
        Are there no words with the same letter three or more times?
        • forbiddenvoid20 minutes ago
          If there was a second of the same letter, but in the wrong place, it would be yellow. If it&#x27;s gray, that means there is no repetition of that letter. So once you&#x27;ve seen that the second one is gray, you have the information you need to know that letter is not repeated.
        • stirfish3 minutes ago
          Grepping &#x2F;usr&#x2F;share&#x2F;dict&#x2F;words shows 110 words that have five letters and the same letter 3 or more times, e.g. sassy, added, daddy, nanny, melee, levee, mummy
    • amiga3864 hours ago
      The best I could do with today&#x27;s word, and the wordlist, but no scoring function to minmax the rules:<p>- FUFFY (8159) (shipping of Faith and Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer)<p>- IMMIX (4544) (to mix or blend)<p>- ZOCCO (2142) (low plinth, from the Italian word for sock)<p>- QAJAQ (530) (alternative form of kayak)<p>- TRATT (155) (clipping of trattoria)<p>- KHAPH (7) (alternative form of khaf, the 11th letter of the Hebrew alphabet)<p>I get the feeling that if this game had 7 steps instead of 6, it would almost always be impossible.
      • ErikCorry4 minutes ago
        Theoretically, you could still win today&#x27;s if there were 8 steps. The ninth is the word you have to avoid.<p>I haven&#x27;t found a way to win today with 9 steps.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;erikcorry&#x2F;b21723a0ba49c044b03a6030dc0e9857" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;erikcorry&#x2F;b21723a0ba49c044b03a6030dc...</a>
      • Lerc3 hours ago
        I had two word possibilities left at the end, so it&#x27;s possible.
    • gowld3 hours ago
      &gt; Sadly there&#x27;s a rule not letting you use a known letter more than once in a word (once A is known, you can&#x27;t write ALPHA),<p>That rule doesn&#x27;t make sense.<p>What if the answer is AORTA, and you want to guess ALBUM and then ALPHA?
      • amiga3863 hours ago
        The sibling comment pointed it out; MAMMA is revealed with one yellow A and one grey A, meaning it has told you there&#x27;s only one A. If the answer was AORTA, then both As in MAMMA would be yellow.
        • dylan6042 hours ago
          &gt; If the answer was AORTA, then both As in MAMMA would be yellow<p>Why would the last A be yellow and not green? It&#x27;s the correct letter in the correct location. MAMMA should be gray, yellow, gray, gray, green.
  • Angostura6 hours ago
    If you enjoy clicking things you can spend hours in their cookie consent boxes untickinv the several hundred individual ‘legitimate interest’ tick boxes for individual vendors
    • wlesieutre4 hours ago
      Only hundreds? I ended up on Thingiverse by accident yesterday it’s<p><pre><code> RESPONSIBLE USE OF YOUR DATA We and our 1022 partners…</code></pre>
    • coldpie4 hours ago
      It&#x27;s your browser&#x27;s job to protect you, not the website&#x27;s. There&#x27;s no guarantee that a &quot;reject all&quot; button does anything, anyway. Instead, just dismiss the banner however and clear the site&#x27;s cookies in the browser when you&#x27;re done. On Firefox, you can clear your cookies in 3 clicks, use the little button on the left side of the URL bar and hit &quot;Clear cookies and site data&quot; and then Confirm.
      • pyrale4 hours ago
        Cookie consent usually also covers fingerprinting. Clearing cookies won&#x27;t protect you from that, not giving your consent may in some jurisdictions.
        • coldpie3 hours ago
          Has that ever been enforced? I don&#x27;t see any real reason to trust that clicking on a div actually does anything.
      • tedmiston4 hours ago
        *browser extensions&#x27; job
    • thi25 hours ago
      No reject all button means a closed tab.
    • gear54rus6 hours ago
      Ublock seems to work with this one.
      • dec0dedab0de4 hours ago
        Yeah, I didn&#x27;t even see the popup
  • dontwordle39 minutes ago
    Wow I can&#x27;t believe this showed up on the front page years later. That&#x27;s fun! I am still new to using Google AdSense and am enjoying the wrath of HN on this thread! Hope everyone can still enjoy the game today. Thank you for the feedback!
  • flexie6 hours ago
    We are asked to allow hundreds of cookies, not just a few, to play the game.
    • Madmallard5 hours ago
      yes top of hacker news and loaded with tracking information and a popular game so likely to garner lots of attention
      • inigyou5 hours ago
        What website isn&#x27;t?<p>The most shocking part is that Americans care about appearing to follow GDPR, for some reason. For example, HN blatantly doesn&#x27;t comply and doesn&#x27;t plan to.
        • snowwrestler3 hours ago
          There are now some U.S. state laws that impose requirements for notice and consent.
        • VonGallifrey5 hours ago
          &gt; HN blatantly doesn&#x27;t comply<p>What about HN doesn&#x27;t comply with GDPR? It does not seem to have tracking cookies.
          • masfuerte5 hours ago
            Apparently they won&#x27;t delete your old comments if you ask them to.<p>I&#x27;m someone who goes to somewhat absurd lengths to avoid tracking, but HN&#x27;s policy doesn&#x27;t bother me because I know the data exists elsewhere and deleting it here won&#x27;t make a jot of difference to that.
            • tialaramex4 hours ago
              I&#x27;m not entirely sure they&#x27;d need to comply. The question is what the purpose of the data being collected was, but seems to me that if you emphasise the whole idea that this is a conversation (which HN does in several ways) then actually &quot;We don&#x27;t delete comments&quot; is defensible.<p>If I&#x27;m reading a thread about a problem I&#x27;m having in a video game on Reddit and it goes &quot;This is very frustrating because I can&#x27;t get a rabbit to teleport&quot;, then a reply which is [deleted] and then &quot;Oh! Thanks so much, I&#x27;d never have figured that out&quot; I&#x27;m in exactly the same place as the original poster, but now with the additional agony of knowing that there was a correct solution and that it&#x27;s hard to figure out what it is - ugh.
              • inigyou4 hours ago
                Right to be forgotten is part of GDPR even though most people only think of cookie banners. There&#x27;s no one-click export, either.
                • awsglkhj2 hours ago
                  That&#x27;s cute. Your records are yours. Barring some agreement to the contrary, I have no right to mess with them or inspect them, even if they contain information about me.
                  • gpvos1 hour ago
                    That&#x27;s an interesting opinion, but EU law says the opposite.
                    • awsglkhj58 minutes ago
                      EU law only matters to those subject to it.
                      • inigyou38 minutes ago
                        Which is why I questioned American websites complying with GDPR, and pointed out that HN doesn&#x27;t feel any need to.
                • tialaramex3 hours ago
                  Like most of the GDPR &quot;Right to be forgotten&quot; is not an absolute right. As you&#x27;ll quickly discover when you insist that the bank needs to &quot;forget&quot; that you owe them a lot of money, there are plenty of legitimate reasons they can decline to &quot;forget&quot; you despite your invocation of a &quot;right&quot;.
  • markkat3 hours ago
    Nice. I play Last Word daily.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dragonfjord.com&#x2F;lastword&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dragonfjord.com&#x2F;lastword&#x2F;</a><p>It&#x27;s the same goal, but everyone starts with the same word each day, which does not include any letters in the &quot;last word&quot;.<p>No undos in Last Word. My average is 8.7 letters. Really hoping to get it to 9.
  • gpvos1 hour ago
    It took me a minute to find out that I needed to close the instructions to see the actual game. A Play button would have been nice.
  • dang53 minutes ago
    Related:<p><i>Show HN: Can you lose at Wordle if you tried?</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31572258">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31572258</a> - May 2022 (236 comments)
  • rylando6 hours ago
    Well this sure makes Wordle feel a lot easier!
    • whoisnjogu6 hours ago
      and I still can&#x27;t believe it took me more than 3 guesses
  • catoc48 minutes ago
    I had to deny hundreds of tracking “partners” wanting to place cookies - without a ‘reject all’ option - before I could even access the website…<p>So Don’t Access <i>Don’t Wordle</i>
  • hollylawly6 hours ago
    Of course the one time I get it in 2 guesses is in this version
    • bonzini6 hours ago
      Got to the sixth attempt, 2 words remaining, of course I picked the right one.
      • stavros5 hours ago
        I picked the right one out of twelve.
        • amiga3865 hours ago
          Having 12 options possible on the last guess is actually very good.
          • stavros5 hours ago
            It was only my last guess because I lost :P I had three remaining.
  • NikolaNovak3 hours ago
    Like it, but would love a &quot;No Undo&quot; option, or at least, &quot;don&#x27;t force undo&quot;.<p>My friends and I share our wordle results daily. Would like to add this, but so that if you guess in three or four tries, that&#x27;s OK, that&#x27;s just your score for the day. Right now game <i>forces</i> me to undo if I have reduced option space to fewer words than there are remaining guesses, and that&#x27;s <i>quite</i> annoying for how we&#x27;d want to play :)
  • Murfalo2 hours ago
    <p><pre><code> * 12974 QAJAQ 1979 PZAZZ 861 OBANG 449 URARI 232 FLAFF 58 DWALM 10 </code></pre> (totally didn&#x27;t cheat: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;murfalo&#x2F;dontwordle-assistant" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;murfalo&#x2F;dontwordle-assistant</a>)
  • grocery_stores6 hours ago
    One thing I find odd about the rules: it forces you to respect what you&#x27;ve learned via green or yellow tiles, but not gray tiles. The spirit of the rules suggests once you&#x27;ve learned a letter is <i>not</i> in the word, you shouldn&#x27;t be able to reuse that letter. Perhaps that would simply make the game too difficult, though.
    • kevsim6 hours ago
      It didn&#x27;t let me guess things that had already been eliminated with gray tiles.
    • pbronez6 hours ago
      It does - you can type them but it rejects the word when you submit it.<p>I think this DOES make it way harder than regular wordle.
    • ChrisRR6 hours ago
      Isn&#x27;t that rule 3?
  • steinvakt24 hours ago
    Cool. Surprisingly difficult. I made an art game inspired by wordle some years ago. My dad and I still play it daily. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;artle.eu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;artle.eu</a>
  • nullzzz3 hours ago
    The ads, the banners. Immediate exit.
  • lucideer5 hours ago
    I tried playing this as if its wordle &amp; got it in 2 guesses. How do they do this ??? That&#x27;s next to impossible in wordle &amp; the probalities seem like they should be the same?
    • tedmiston4 hours ago
      By playing Wordle well, you are essentially eliminating as much unknown words as possible each turn, e.g., SALET alone takes 12974 words down to 34 here today.<p>But this is like Wordle hard mode with the forced letters, so the optimal strategy is probably to invert and <i>eliminate as little words as possible</i> each turn.<p>I got pretty far here using weird words, but PIZZA turned out to be a terrible first guess for Don&#x27;t Wordle (eliminating ~75% of the words):<p><pre><code> * 12974 PIZZA 3169 AQUAS 290 SAWED 17 MEASE 7 LEASH 0</code></pre>
      • lucideer2 hours ago
        Wordle hard mode (which I play) generally limits you to a similar degree as this game - it&#x27;s less strict programmatically, but anyone willingly opting into hard mode is likely following the same rules as are enforced here.<p>So it <i>should</i> be the same.<p>(assuming here that you&#x27;re deliberately attempting to lose this game).
    • quietbritishjim2 hours ago
      I think you really did just get lucky. It does pick a word up front at the start.
    • f2474l4 hours ago
      The game is cheating I guess
  • huhtenberg6 hours ago
    Some of the suggested plays for yellow EA and green H after the first guess:<p><pre><code> ALMEH BEKAH BELAH DEASH OBEAH SELAH </code></pre> Not much fun to play with a dictionary like this :-&#x2F;
    • pimlottc5 hours ago
      And yet it didn’t accept JORTS :&#x2F;
      • MarkusQ4 hours ago
        I can respect finding JORTS unacceptable.
  • noahlt3 hours ago
    This is a great demonstration of why Wordle’s Hard Mode is actually easier.
    • stanmancan3 hours ago
      My problem with hard mode is it leaves a lot up to luck. If it was 3 letters and ended in “at” it could be pat, mat, bat, hat, cat, rat, sat, etc. so all you can do is to pick one and hope for the best.
  • netsharc6 hours ago
    I&#x27;d enjoy it if the rules with some graphics are displayed near the game, for newbies.<p>e.g. show a word with some green letters and that they have to be in the same spot in the other word. e.g. FUBAR with green B -&gt; __B__<p>FUBAR with yellow R -&gt; RRRR_ (with gray background and white R to signify &quot;has to be placed somewhere here&quot;)<p>And for the gray letters, I guess.. show them next to the _____ in a trash can?
  • rhplus2 hours ago
    I sense this is not winnable for all Wordle dictionary words. Is that provably the case?
  • embedding-shape6 hours ago
    This is amazing, and incredible difficult (or I&#x27;m terrible), after ~10 minutes I can&#x27;t even get in a third guess!
  • jamesforestwest2 hours ago
    Funny idea, it turned out to be a bit more difficult than I thought
  • tfrancisl3 hours ago
    Clicked expecting commentary on why playing NYTs wordle, and perhaps other games, was problematic for some reason. Found a game instead.
  • theanonymousone6 hours ago
    I hope NYT lawyers don&#x27;t come for you. They did for many other variants of this. Maybe reconsider the name?
    • lugao6 hours ago
      Do they go after people using similar names or just any game with similar mechanics?
      • xigoi2 hours ago
        IIUC, game mechanics are not copyrightable.
      • mh-4 hours ago
        Just the trademark, that I&#x27;ve seen.
  • mryingster2 hours ago
    Dang it. I accidentally got the word in two!!!
  • MDTHLN6 hours ago
    This is quite fun, but I can’t believe the amount of cookies it wants to set!
    • whstl6 hours ago
      I had my ad blocker turned off temporarily and it was a strange experience.
  • Folcon6 hours ago
    Is the word list complete?<p>I tried WEIRD and it rejected it as not a word
    • zabzonk5 hours ago
      that &quot;i before e except after c&quot; rule often gets taken too seriously
      • bigfishrunning5 hours ago
        i think it&#x27;s kind of beautiful that weird is a weird word
        • hnlmorg5 hours ago
          Isn’t there more exceptions to that rule than there are examples where it’s correct?
          • xigoi2 hours ago
            Only if you forget the final part, “…when it sounds like ‘ee’”.
          • MarkusQ4 hours ago
            Yep, at least on most static word lists.<p>It&#x27;s a fun exercise to try and improve the rule by extending it compared to just switching to &quot;E before I&quot;.
      • LuminousWzrd5 hours ago
        Oh I&#x27;ve messed that one up before
  • senfiaj4 hours ago
    You can use hints, after that I could find the right sequence<p>trash smash abash gnash quash clash
  • luciana1u6 hours ago
    finally a game that respects that I already know all five-letter words and would rather be told not to use them
  • HelloUsername4 hours ago
    (Un)related; does anyone know where to play the non-NYT Wordle version?
    • teach4 hours ago
      The original version of Wordle was purchased by the NYT and then Josh took down his copy, so there&#x27;s no canonical &quot;non-NYT&quot; version anymore.
      • dec0dedab0de4 hours ago
        I&#x27;m sure someone has the original saved somewhere, I had it on an old work computer.
  • mda6 hours ago
    I see that terrible cookie permission window (62 legitimate interest) and I close the window,
  • thomastjeffery1 hour ago
    Unfortunately, my goto starter word is 4 green letters.<p>It&#x27;s pretty frustrating to immediately lose, and then have to undo to find out what the word was.
  • lugao6 hours ago
    It is too hard to be fun :P
  • intrasight6 hours ago
    What does &quot;you have already eliminated the letter T&quot; mean?
    • codechicago2776 hours ago
      You already guessed a word that had a “T” in it, and the game confirmed that “T” is not in the word. So you can’t guess another word with a “T”.
    • astura6 hours ago
      The word doesn&#x27;t contain the letter T.<p>It means you previously guessed a word with T in it and it wasn&#x27;t marked at green (correct spot) or yellow (word contains letter in different spot).
  • wafflebot26 minutes ago
    got it on 2nd turn. I am terrible at this.
  • doctorpangloss2 hours ago
    Legitimately a much better game than actual Wordle.
  • JoshTriplett4 hours ago
    Disappointing that this seems to <i>only</i> be a &quot;daily&quot; game, and not have a &quot;just play&quot; mode that uses random words. First thing that I look for with any game that presents itself as &quot;daily&quot; is &quot;where&#x27;s the non-daily mode&quot;.
  • phren0logy5 hours ago
    Be happ-ole? (Insert whistling)
  • massimodeluisa6 hours ago
    Ahahhaha funny! xD
  • GNR_Radio6 hours ago
    [dead]
  • burnt-resistor6 hours ago
    The goal isn&#x27;t explained clearly and simply enough.
    • pasc18786 hours ago
      The goal is to get mony from clicks in &quot;legitimate interest&quot;<p>What is legitimate here. You and the site why does any third party have an interest?
  • tantalor5 hours ago
    (meta comment) the chit chat about cookies is off topic and pointless