Don't Wordle

(dontwordle.com)

165 points | by Hbruz0 3 hours ago

29 comments

  • tfrancisl 2 minutes ago
    Clicked expecting commentary on why playing NYTs wordle, and perhaps other games, was problematic for some reason. Found a game instead.
  • noahlt 4 minutes ago
    This is a great demonstration of why Wordle’s Hard Mode is actually easier.
  • amiga386 2 hours ago
    12935 -> TIZZY (5625) -> OXBOW (2674) -> GRUFF (858) -> MAMMA (195) and I'll let you guess the rest but my next choice left 43 words, and I survived with only 4 words possible.

    The rules not letting use a letter you know isn'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'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're not locked into having to use them.

    Once you are forced to use letters from the target word, avoid placing them in the right place. Sadly there's a rule not letting you use a known letter more than once in a word (once A is known, you can't write ALPHA), and a rule for not letting you put a known letter in a place you know it doesn't go (so after MAMMA, you can't have HALVE because you know there's not an A in second place, nor ALPHA because you know there's not an A in fifth place).

    • SkiFire13 5 minutes ago
      > Sadly there's a rule not letting you use a known letter more than once in a word (once A is known, you can't write ALPHA)

      This is entirely correct (or at least it's worded a bit weirdly).

      If you know that A goes in a certain place you can still try a word using A more than once. It'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.

      In your case you tried MAMMA which contained 2 As and the second one gave you the information that there's no second A.

    • amiga386 1 hour ago
      The best I could do with today's word, and the wordlist, but no scoring function to minmax the rules:

      - FUFFY (8159) (shipping of Faith and Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

      - IMMIX (4544) (to mix or blend)

      - ZOCCO (2142) (low plinth, from the Italian word for sock)

      - QAJAQ (530) (alternative form of kayak)

      - TRATT (155) (clipping of trattoria)

      - KHAPH (7) (alternative form of khaf, the 11th letter of the Hebrew alphabet)

      I get the feeling that if this game had 7 steps instead of 6, it would almost always be impossible.

    • gowld 11 minutes ago
      > Sadly there's a rule not letting you use a known letter more than once in a word (once A is known, you can't write ALPHA),

      That rule doesn't make sense.

      What if the answer is AORTA, and you want to guess ALBUM and then ALPHA?

  • Angostura 2 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
    • coldpie 1 hour ago
      It's your browser's job to protect you, not the website's. There's no guarantee that a "reject all" button does anything, anyway. Instead, just dismiss the banner however and clear the site's cookies in the browser when you'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 "Clear cookies and site data" and then Confirm.
      • pyrale 37 minutes ago
        Cookie consent usually also covers fingerprinting. Clearing cookies won't protect you from that, not giving your consent may in some jurisdictions.
        • coldpie 5 minutes ago
          Has that ever been enforced? I don't see any real reason to trust that clicking on a div actually does anything.
      • tedmiston 46 minutes ago
        *browser extensions' job
    • wlesieutre 1 hour ago
      Only hundreds? I ended up on Thingiverse by accident yesterday it’s

        RESPONSIBLE USE OF YOUR DATA
        We and our 1022 partners…
    • thi2 1 hour ago
      No reject all button means a closed tab.
    • gear54rus 2 hours ago
      Ublock seems to work with this one.
  • markkat 23 minutes ago
    Nice. I play Last Word daily.

    https://dragonfjord.com/lastword/

    It's the same goal, but everyone starts with the same word each day, which does not include any letters in the "last word".

    No undos in Last Word. My average is 8.7 letters. Really hoping to get it to 9.

  • flexie 2 hours ago
    We are asked to allow hundreds of cookies, not just a few, to play the game.
    • Madmallard 2 hours ago
      yes top of hacker news and loaded with tracking information and a popular game so likely to garner lots of attention
      • inigyou 2 hours ago
        What website isn't?

        The most shocking part is that Americans care about appearing to follow GDPR, for some reason. For example, HN blatantly doesn't comply and doesn't plan to.

        • snowwrestler 31 minutes ago
          There are now some U.S. state laws that impose requirements for notice and consent.
        • VonGallifrey 1 hour ago
          > HN blatantly doesn't comply

          What about HN doesn't comply with GDPR? It does not seem to have tracking cookies.

          • masfuerte 1 hour ago
            Apparently they won't delete your old comments if you ask them to.

            I'm someone who goes to somewhat absurd lengths to avoid tracking, but HN's policy doesn't bother me because I know the data exists elsewhere and deleting it here won't make a jot of difference to that.

            • tialaramex 1 hour ago
              I'm not entirely sure they'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 "We don't delete comments" is defensible.

              If I'm reading a thread about a problem I'm having in a video game on Reddit and it goes "This is very frustrating because I can't get a rabbit to teleport", then a reply which is [deleted] and then "Oh! Thanks so much, I'd never have figured that out" I'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's hard to figure out what it is - ugh.

              • inigyou 1 hour ago
                Right to be forgotten is part of GDPR even though most people only think of cookie banners. There's no one-click export, either.
  • rylando 2 hours ago
    Well this sure makes Wordle feel a lot easier!
    • whoisnjogu 2 hours ago
      and I still can't believe it took me more than 3 guesses
  • steinvakt2 1 hour ago
    Cool. Surprisingly difficult. I made an art game inspired by wordle some years ago. My dad and I still play it daily. https://artle.eu
  • hollylawly 2 hours ago
    Of course the one time I get it in 2 guesses is in this version
    • bonzini 2 hours ago
      Got to the sixth attempt, 2 words remaining, of course I picked the right one.
      • stavros 2 hours ago
        I picked the right one out of twelve.
        • amiga386 2 hours ago
          Having 12 options possible on the last guess is actually very good.
          • stavros 1 hour ago
            It was only my last guess because I lost :P I had three remaining.
  • grocery_stores 2 hours ago
    One thing I find odd about the rules: it forces you to respect what you've learned via green or yellow tiles, but not gray tiles. The spirit of the rules suggests once you've learned a letter is not in the word, you shouldn't be able to reuse that letter. Perhaps that would simply make the game too difficult, though.
    • kevsim 2 hours ago
      It didn't let me guess things that had already been eliminated with gray tiles.
    • pbronez 2 hours ago
      It does - you can type them but it rejects the word when you submit it.

      I think this DOES make it way harder than regular wordle.

    • ChrisRR 2 hours ago
      Isn't that rule 3?
  • lucideer 2 hours ago
    I tried playing this as if its wordle & got it in 2 guesses. How do they do this ??? That's next to impossible in wordle & the probalities seem like they should be the same?
    • tedmiston 41 minutes 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.

      But this is like Wordle hard mode with the forced letters, so the optimal strategy is probably to invert and eliminate as little words as possible each turn.

      I got pretty far here using weird words, but PIZZA turned out to be a terrible first guess for Don't Wordle (eliminating ~75% of the words):

          *      12974
          PIZZA   3169
          AQUAS    290
          SAWED     17
          MEASE      7
          LEASH      0
    • f2474l 1 hour ago
      The game is cheating I guess
  • huhtenberg 2 hours ago
    Some of the suggested plays for yellow EA and green H after the first guess:

        ALMEH
        BEKAH
        BELAH
        DEASH
        OBEAH
        SELAH
    
    Not much fun to play with a dictionary like this :-/
    • pimlottc 1 hour ago
      And yet it didn’t accept JORTS :/
      • MarkusQ 1 hour ago
        I can respect finding JORTS unacceptable.
  • netsharc 2 hours ago
    I'd enjoy it if the rules with some graphics are displayed near the game, for newbies.

    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 -> __B__

    FUBAR with yellow R -> RRRR_ (with gray background and white R to signify "has to be placed somewhere here")

    And for the gray letters, I guess.. show them next to the _____ in a trash can?

  • senfiaj 1 hour ago
    You can use hints, after that I could find the right sequence

    trash smash abash gnash quash clash

  • embedding-shape 2 hours ago
    This is amazing, and incredible difficult (or I'm terrible), after ~10 minutes I can't even get in a third guess!
  • theanonymousone 2 hours ago
    I hope NYT lawyers don't come for you. They did for many other variants of this. Maybe reconsider the name?
    • lugao 2 hours ago
      Do they go after people using similar names or just any game with similar mechanics?
      • mh- 1 hour ago
        Just the trademark, that I've seen.
  • HelloUsername 1 hour ago
    (Un)related; does anyone know where to play the non-NYT Wordle version?
    • teach 1 hour ago
      The original version of Wordle was purchased by the NYT and then Josh took down his copy, so there's no canonical "non-NYT" version anymore.
      • dec0dedab0de 1 hour ago
        I'm sure someone has the original saved somewhere, I had it on an old work computer.
  • MDTHLN 2 hours ago
    This is quite fun, but I can’t believe the amount of cookies it wants to set!
    • whstl 2 hours ago
      I had my ad blocker turned off temporarily and it was a strange experience.
  • Folcon 2 hours ago
    Is the word list complete?

    I tried WEIRD and it rejected it as not a word

    • zabzonk 2 hours ago
      that "i before e except after c" rule often gets taken too seriously
      • bigfishrunning 2 hours ago
        i think it's kind of beautiful that weird is a weird word
        • hnlmorg 1 hour ago
          Isn’t there more exceptions to that rule than there are examples where it’s correct?
          • MarkusQ 1 hour ago
            Yep, at least on most static word lists.

            It's a fun exercise to try and improve the rule by extending it compared to just switching to "E before I".

      • LuminousWzrd 2 hours ago
        Oh I've messed that one up before
  • luciana1u 2 hours ago
    finally a game that respects that I already know all five-letter words and would rather be told not to use them
  • JoshTriplett 45 minutes ago
    Disappointing that this seems to only be a "daily" game, and not have a "just play" mode that uses random words. First thing that I look for with any game that presents itself as "daily" is "where's the non-daily mode".
  • mda 2 hours ago
    I see that terrible cookie permission window (62 legitimate interest) and I close the window,
  • intrasight 2 hours ago
    What does "you have already eliminated the letter T" mean?
    • codechicago277 2 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”.
    • astura 2 hours ago
      The word doesn't contain the letter T.

      It means you previously guessed a word with T in it and it wasn't marked at green (correct spot) or yellow (word contains letter in different spot).

  • lugao 2 hours ago
    It is too hard to be fun :P
  • phren0logy 2 hours ago
    Be happ-ole? (Insert whistling)
  • massimodeluisa 2 hours ago
    Ahahhaha funny! xD
  • GNR_Radio 2 hours ago
    [dead]
  • burnt-resistor 2 hours ago
    The goal isn't explained clearly and simply enough.
    • pasc1878 2 hours ago
      The goal is to get mony from clicks in "legitimate interest"

      What is legitimate here. You and the site why does any third party have an interest?

  • tantalor 1 hour ago
    (meta comment) the chit chat about cookies is off topic and pointless