BS: Wordle

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 19 Feb 22 - 06:34 AM

I had four out of the five letters in the right places after three and there were only three possible words it could be

In that case, enter a word that has at least two of those possible letters. It doesn't matter if the letters you already know are included or not. If one of those two turns up as yellow, then your next turn will solve it. Otherwise, use the letter that was not chosen.

I don't really see the point of posting Wordle scores. The earlier you get it, the more likely that luck played a greater part than skill. The most boring thing about Wordle is the number of collumn inches

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 19 Feb 22 - 06:41 AM

I didn't mean to press submit - I was just trying to correct the mis-spelling of "column" when I caught the submit button.

To continue .....

The most boring thing about Wordle is the number of collumn inches in serious journals dedicated to discussing the anger and frustration of Wordle players with the New York Times because they got the puzzle wrong.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 19 Feb 22 - 06:45 AM

I am not doing well today. The first paragraph in my post of 6:34am was supposed to be in italics as a quote from Steve's post preceding mine.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 19 Feb 22 - 06:48 AM

Oh bugger! I still didn't manage to correct to correct the mis-spelling.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Feb 22 - 08:59 AM

It's just a bunch of fun, Doug. You're not able to spend too long on it or get obsessed. There are kids and non-kids by the hundred million wasting their lives and getting fat via spending all day on Facebook or playing "computer games." You can't do that with Wordle. I love all the little spats and moans that rear up every day apropos of Wordle. Mainly because they're little!

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Feb 22 - 12:45 PM

Begod, I got it in two!

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 20 Feb 22 - 07:55 PM

Likewise. My 'starter' of TRAIN set me off very well!

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Feb 22 - 08:57 PM

Tell you what, though, Nigel. I got it in two. But should I have expected praise from my somewhat biased family? ? Well I should not. In fact, my two kids have both insinuated that I'd cheated. Now why would I decide to cheat, a man who's never cheated in his whole life...

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Feb 22 - 10:11 PM

"TRUCK" got me pretty close also, but I did it in 4.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Feb 22 - 05:00 AM

Four. Should have been three but I tried an over-clever daft guess for line 3. Grr.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 21 Feb 22 - 09:15 AM

Wordle 247 4/6

Using the 'share' button then pasting manages to include the question number as well. But delete all the blocks as they only come out as question marks.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 21 Feb 22 - 09:16 AM

*Sorry*
That came out looking like an instruction rather than the intended suggestion.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Feb 22 - 11:32 AM

Wordle 247 5/6

I'm glad this is only once a day. I can enjoy the puzzle then move onto other stuff or compare notes with friends. Facebook is full of the pasted results now.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Raedwulf
Date: 21 Feb 22 - 02:33 PM

Since I wrote this a few weeks ago for something (private) elsewhere, this might (or might not) be of interest to some of you. Slightly edited for the different environment...

~~~~~~

To E, or not to E, sorry, what is the question?

The answer is E, the question, however you choose to investigate it, is what is the most common letter in English? Interest in the topic of letter frequency is astonishingly old (well, I was astonished, anyway). The first known analysis was done by an Arab mathematician, Al-Kindi, who lived from 801 to 873 (he was one of those Arabic scholars who was tasked with translating Greek scientific & philosophical treatises into Arabic, and played an important part in the introduction of Indian i.e. Arabic numerals; you lot won't recall earlier entries on numbers & counting). It's not impossible that it may even go back to Roman times.

The reason? Cryptanalysis. Al-Kindi used his results to formally develop the method for breaking ciphers. Old Julius (Caesar, that is) has turned up more than once for various reasons in these entries (wot you 'as not seen!), notably for his calendar reforms. Although he didn't invent ciphers, which have been in use for anything up to 3,000 years, he is the first recorded user.

The Caesar cipher is a simple shift cipher e.g. A becomes D, B becomes E. However complicated your cipher is, if it has a regular pattern where one letter is always represented by the same other letter, whether it's from simple shifting, or using a more complex key, then knowing the letter frequency of the language you're trying to decipher is a vital component of that.

You can determine letter frequency in various ways. Samuel Morse, when trying to assign the simplest dot-dash keying to the most frequent letters in his famous Code, simply counted up the number of letters in sets of printers type. E came out top, 60 times more common than Z (12,000 vs 200). Essentially, this is a simple way of performing text analysis. The idiosyncracy of this is that a relatively small number of words dominate in language – he, she, the, in, of, and & so on(!). It's not necessarily a fault; indeed, it's an advantage if the ciphered message is in plain language. But “the cat sat on the mat” presents an entirely different proposition to the abbreviated “cat sat mat”, where half the message is inferred, rather than included, without the clarity of the message being affected.

Another way of doing it is to go through the main entries in a comprehensive dictionary. Someone did that with the Concise OED of 1995; E still came out top, but Q was last; the former at 11.16% was 56.88 times more likely to appear than Q. The idiosyncracy there is your results will vary according to your dictionary. The Wiki entry on the topic has E top with 11%, but J last with 0.21% (Q is now on 0.24%). I don't know which dikker their numbers are based on.

A third way is to include all variants of a word in your analysis, but that biases certain letters because of suffixes. If abstract is the main entry, then you have abstracts, abstracting, abstracted, abstractise... What do you mean I made that last one up!

If you choose to do it on initial letters of words, the frequency of certain combinations of letters such as 'th', sc', sh' and so on means you get an entirely different set of results. On text analyis, T is the most common initial letter (all those The's & Then's & These's!) followed by A (E is 15th); dictionary analysis gives you S, then C (E, 12th). But it's useful knowledge if you're setting up a filing system or anything else, such a multi-volume encyclopaedia, that is split on an A to Z basis.

As for the least frequent, the last four are almost entirely consistent. On initial letter dictionary analysis, Y drops in; J, almost 3 times as likely to be an initial, is promoted to 6th last. Otherwise, it's always J, Q, X & Z, in various orders. Which explains a lot about Scrabble scoring!

As for what prompted this, it's all those of you (you know who are!) who keep posting your Wordle scores. I finally took a look at it (& got it in 3 smug). You might just as well start with stone or stain or stair or store & go from there. Although my one & only go started with “taken”, which was handy, since “spiky” then led to “perky”!

Finally, in other languages, the proportions are naturally different, but the letters aren't necessarily. E is even more frequent in French (14.71%) & German (16.4%) than in English, and a whopping 18.91% in Dutch. You have to go to languages such as Portuguese, Esperanto, Polish, Turkish & Icelandic for that to change (to A, and only in Polish (4th) & Icelandic (5th) is E not 2nd). A, I, & S consistently appear in the top 7 in all of those, with N, R, & T most likely to fill the other 3 spots.

~~~~~

My own strategy is to start with words such as stone, train, notes, that use the most common letters. Whether (& how) you choose any of them is pretty irrelevant. Only blind luck will get you 1/6, and it takes nearly as blind luck to get 2/6 (I've done it once in 20 goes, with two more "if I'd chosen that word instead..."). On the first line, eliminating the most likely letters is as useful as scoring, given the random element. On Sunday, I think, the first 8 letters I chose were all fails; the last 2 on the second line were in the wrong place. I was slightly fortunate to get the word on the 3rd line, but it was also an educated guess, given what had been eliminated.

Whilst there is no logic to it, I try to avoid repeating "opening line" letters (and also opening letter) the following day. There's no reason why stone shouldn't be followed by stein, stair, stain, stale... But it doesn't seem to work that way; I try to change vowels (generally ignoring U, which is rather less common, for the first try). If the word was tacit (a few days ago), I probably went for something like crone or snore next day. It's strictly not logical, but I do it anyway! ;-)

The three important things to remember:

The same letter can appear more than once (this is not explained);
The dictionary is US (despite the creator being British), so rubbishy spelling like center & favor are valid, rather than centre & favour as it should be (and yes that's a deliberate match to the blue-touch paper! :p);
It is rumoured that plurals are not in the (known to be fixed) word list. There are plenty of 5 letter words terminating in S, but whilst bonus, I daresay, is included, sites, rates, teams, etc won't be. I can't speak for the truth of that, but in my limited experience I've never seen one (nor e.g. gives).

Lastly, although I've never set Wordle to hard mode, I've never played it any other way. I have friends that sometimes do that, but I don't see the point. The object is to guess the word in the fewest number of tries; leaving out letters you know are in the word guarantees failure. So I don't. But maybe that's just me!




* And extra-lastly, someone above suggested a bunch of Q-words to start with. Given that that's in the bottom 4 for frequency & pretty much guarantees you a following U, the least likely vowel by some margin... Good luck with that as a strategy! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Feb 22 - 04:50 PM

Well I don't agree with you about American spellings, because (a) I prefer them, (b) many of them actually predate "English-English" spellings. Railing against American spellings in a game founded by a Brit in America for his American wife smacks of imperialism... But I do agree about the conscious strategy of eliminating letters rather than finding letters. For the last few times I've started with ADIEU: that either nails or eliminates four out of five vowels. After that, it's all about eliminating common consonants. We all have our little ways...

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Stanron
Date: 21 Feb 22 - 05:29 PM

I've been starting with AUDIO, I'd forgotten about ADIEU, and if AUDIO is all grey I follow with REEVE which tests for E in three places in one go.

The coding statistics are interesting but I'm not sure how useful they are when looking for a single random word.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Feb 22 - 12:58 PM

That sounds like a good ploy to me...

Got it in three today. A very odd thing happened today. Mrs Steve also got in three, with exactly the same steps as me. We'd started with the same word not knowing what the other was doing, though we'd discussed in the past a few likely contenders...

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Raedwulf
Date: 22 Feb 22 - 01:06 PM

Typical of you to deliberately misinterpret something I've written, Shaw. I wasn't "railing" against anything; all the stuff I write for the group of word-interested friends has a somewhat humorous slant to it and, bar you, I doubt anyone here is likely to take the remark seriously (which they shouldn't, since it isn't).

As for US very spelling vs British spelling, the common tale is that Noah Webster (he of the Dikker) standardised his spellings away from British English where possible because he was an Anglophobe. Part true - he was an Anglophobe. But his actual raison d'etre was to simplify spelling by writing words how they were pronounced. One of his alterations that didn't catch on was masheen for machine.

In other cases, what's going on is less clear. Webster wasn't concerned with where a word came from, he was simply trying to make spelling easier to learn by doing it somewhat phonetically (you might argue that he should have changed centre to senter, rather than center). Take -ice, -ise, -ize endings for example. Practice or practise? The rule... but it isn't; it's a guideline. The guideline is -ice is a noun, -ise is a verb. But entice is a verb & exercise a noun. -ize vs -ise is just as bad. That also isn't British vs US spelling, although it is the case that America has largely standardised on -ize, whereas the British standardized on -ise (& yes, I did that deliberately). The OED's take is that if the source was the Greek ending -izo / -izein , then -ize is the closest match & therefore preferred from the etymological p-o-v.

But the roots of British English are complicated. Color is Latin; technically Webster was right? But we adopted a lot of words from Latin, Anglo-Norman, and French and sometimes from multiple sources. In A-Norman, colur, culur, coler, coloure, coleure, collour are all recorded, in Middle French, color, colour, coulour. In 1694, the French standardised their -ices & -izes into -ises, which also influenced us (rather than US! ;-) ). Short answer, there isn't really a right or wrong. Except possibly where -yse is concerned (which the US generally spells -yze). That's from a Greek stem of -lys-, on which Fowler (he of Modern Usage) has this to say:

“Analyse is better than analyze, but merely as being the one of the two equally indefensible forms that has won. The correct but now impossible form would be analysize (or analysise), with analysist for existing analyst.” There isn't really a right or wrong, just common usage.

Anyway enough of that! Stanron - I don't know how useful my method is either, to be honest. But I think it is of some help. Take today's Wordle - I got the first letter correct & another letter in the wrong place (2nd). Second line, I totally forgot to use the incorrectly placed letter, but got another ditto (4th). I'd also eliminated 4 of the 5 vowels. Given the 3 consonants I had, one fixed, and the compulsory vowel that was left, I really only had one choice. so it helps a bit, I think. How much is another matter!

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Feb 22 - 03:35 PM

What was that you were saying about lighting the blue touchpaper...?   :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Jeri
Date: 22 Feb 22 - 04:55 PM

This is why we can't have nice things.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Feb 22 - 05:29 PM

That's too apocalyptic for words, Jeri. Humour (or, as Wordle would have it, humor) is a great weapon...

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Jeri
Date: 22 Feb 22 - 06:21 PM

One wonders how apocalyptic a thing has to be for wordlessness. Are there degrees of apocalypsis?
I got today's in three, and I used the British spelling!

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Feb 22 - 06:37 PM

Now that's what I could call humo(u)r. British spelling for that one? Dammit, it's not midnight yet so spoilers aren't allowed, but...but...?

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Feb 22 - 07:07 PM

You can look me up on that pet peeves thread, but I've consistently railed against criticism of "American spellings." I admit to being caught out on Wordle by one such a couple of weeks ago, but a moment's reflection showed me that such criticism is completely irrational. Not only is a lot of American spelling more logical than English-English, much of it actually predates it. Harping on about Latin/Greek/A.N.Other origins of words is fine, but the bottom line, whether we like it or not (and you don't have to), is that "correct English" is wot people speak, not wot the grammar police or students of etymology like to dictate. Digging and delving into ancient Latin/Middle English/ Geoffrey Of Monmouth is a useful and informative endeavour, but it's English like wot people speak now wot matters. And there are seven times as many yanks as Brits, they all speak English, so, Brits, shut up about American spellings!

And one wonderful thing is that "albeit" can never be a Wordle word!

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 04:19 AM

I’m totally out of my depth here and this is just my curiosity but going by the Wikipedia article, “American spelling” is a standardisation started by Webster. Regardless of the spellings chosen, it dates no earlier than 1825.

Webster hoped to standardize American speech, since Americans in different parts of the country used different languages. They also spelled, pronounced, and used English words differently.

Of course I’ve no idea how old “British spelling” would be with similar reasoning but I guess we also had variations in spelling that got standardised at some point?

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 04:55 AM

Five. Grr again. After line 2 it could really only have been one of three words, just one letter to go, and there was nothing for it but to guess. So I guessed wrong in lines 3 and 4. That's the third time that's happened to me!

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 07:10 AM

Jon, the 1825 "standardisation" doesn't replace the fact that a lot what we call American spellings were used before that, in both America and Britain. Old Webster had a stubborn individualist streak that had him promoting American spellings, many of which were probably already in use (no scholarship from me on that, mind you...). Much earlier, Dr Johnson and his dictionary did much to standardise British spelling, which probably did away with most of any tendency to use American-type spelling this end. So we can blame Webster and Johnson for perpetuating modern arguments about which we should be using. I actually prefer American spellings that try to simplify how words look on the page. For now, I'll be sticking with "our" version of -ise/-ize and stuff like that, and I like the useful distinction between practice and practise, though I can see that routine confusion between the two weakens my stance...

And I'll stoutly defend the right of Wordle to use American spellings if it wants to!

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 07:27 AM

I suppose on one hand, I can growl at American spellings and dislike them. I suppose on an other, I sometimes (increasingly rarely) have small dabblings with computing and it would make no sense to play hell that a keyword for some established language is say "color" rather than "colour". One has to learn to accept and live with some things...

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 08:41 AM

I tried today's and got it in 2.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 10:30 AM

I'm glad it's only one attempt per day, it makes it more of a treat. No bingeing.

Got it in three today, and it just kind of played itself.

Wordle 249 3/6

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Jeri
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 01:28 PM

Oh, shut up Jon! (insert winky face here) Haven't tried yet. After my l lunch date, I'll get it in negative 3.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: robomatic
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 02:24 PM

FWIW, I tried 'LORRY' and it was accepted.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 02:57 PM

Anyone tried Quordle?

Bloomin' eck!

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 03:42 PM

I just got lucky, Jeri. My first guess had 3 letters in the wrong places and trying to think of a word to rearrange those landed me on the solution.

As perhaps the only person in this thread to have failed on one, I can't claim to be that clever anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Stanron
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 03:50 PM

I've failed on a couple. My longest streak was eleven, it's currently six. Both fails were where I had the last four letters correct and there were just too many options for the first letter.

I look on the fails as being as much about luck as the time I got it in two.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 04:49 PM

I've just tried and failed on Quordle, Dave.

I concentrated on the word I had with 3 letters, 2 in the right places, from the start and it took me 5 goes to complete that one. It took me my remaining 4 tries to solve what I thought would be the easiest of the ones remaining with the letters I'd played.

Too complicated for me, I think.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Jeri
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 07:29 PM

Got it in 4. Almost had to go one more, because I was going to stick the wrong letter someplace, until I realized Wordle isn't that highbrow.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Feb 22 - 10:37 PM

A few days ago I failed to solve it - from their stats I messed up six days ago.

20 - Played
95 - Win %
5 - Current Streak
14 - Max Streak

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Feb 22 - 06:30 AM

Five. Not happy with myself. Bad guess on line 4.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 24 Feb 22 - 06:40 AM

I tried again today. 5 too for me although I'd not blame myself for not getting 4. I had what I suppose I could represent as:

*YY*Y

on line 3 but it took a couple more tries to fill the gaps.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: robomatic
Date: 24 Feb 22 - 07:19 AM

Spoiler alert:

Only reason I got this one was I was trying an English word to see if they'd take it.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Feb 22 - 04:48 PM

Yeah, I thought this one was a leftover from the British list.

Wordle 250 5/6

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Feb 22 - 07:12 AM

Four. Got there quickly after a bad start.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Feb 22 - 07:36 AM

My "streak" thing isn't accurate. I think it's because I lost some the stats when the changeover to the NYT website happened. It sez my best streak is 15, though I've now done it 20 times and got it every time (I'm not bragging, honest...). I have a feeling that you're not allowed to miss a day if you want to keep your streak intact. I haven't missed any day since started doing it.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Noreen
Date: 25 Feb 22 - 10:42 AM

Thanks for the suggestions for other variants to try- I'll give them a go.

As well as Wordle there is:
Quordle (4 words)
Octordle (8 words) and
Sedecordle (16 words) - currently my favourite as you get lots of clues from the other words you've guessed.

And as someone above suggested, there is a 6-letter word version:
Worgle

There are also two geographical ones:
Worldle and
Globle

and a different sort of wordy one which I've only tried once and could get frustrating- find the intended word by meaning:
Semantle

Lastly, a silly one called
Letterle which might hold your interest for a minute or two :)


(Apologies for not typing in all the links but they are easily Googled.)

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Jeri
Date: 25 Feb 22 - 05:02 PM

The changeover doesn't seem to have affected my stats.
Played: 40
Win %: 93
Current streak: 28

I thought I missed one somewhere, but if they err on MY side, I'll take it. Who knows, maybe I didn't miss anything.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Jeri
Date: 26 Feb 22 - 06:03 PM

Please do NOT post spoilers. Do NOT post hints. Do NOT tell us what actual letters you got.

I finally did it: got it in one today. I got it because someone posted two letters he got in the wrong place, and the last letter which was in the correct place. I thought of a word with those two letters in different places, and the end letter, and thought "well, maybe", typed it in, and that was it.
Frankly, it was cool to get it right that fast, but it wasn't fun.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: robomatic
Date: 26 Feb 22 - 06:11 PM

Steve:

Exactly the same thing happened to me with streak interrurption when the New York Times transition occurred.

Jeri: I hear ya. And agree.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Feb 22 - 07:00 PM

Four.

I will not cheat, I will not take or look for hints, I'm not listening to what other people have achieved and I will not compete. I want this to be fun. I don't do crosswords, sudoku or anything else like those ghastly wastes of life. I hate all kinds of games. But this one is a piece of genius, an amazing mix of mental intrigue and sheer luck, with a good degree of annoyance thrown in. I want to give it five or ten minutes over my mid-morning flat white. It feels good for my brain.

Subject: RE: BS: Wordle
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 27 Feb 22 - 03:23 AM

200!

And got it in 2 today for the first time :-)