Don't Wordle (dontwordle.com)
324 points by Hbruz0 17 hours ago
amiga386 15 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 13 hours 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 not 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.
gpvos 11 hours ago
Are there no words with the same letter three or more times?
forbiddenvoid 10 hours ago
fwip 9 hours ago
stirfish 10 hours ago
amiga386 15 hours 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.
ErikCorry 10 hours ago
Theoretically, you could still win today's if there were 8 steps. The ninth is the word you have to avoid.
I haven't found a way to win today with 9 steps.
https://gist.github.com/erikcorry/b21723a0ba49c044b03a6030dc...
Edit: Using some of your words you can get to 9 steps (10 including the word you have to avoid): https://gist.github.com/erikcorry/d55d263b129eb7a56c8c212296...
Lerc 13 hours ago
I had two word possibilities left at the end, so it's possible.
gowld 13 hours 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?
amiga386 13 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's only one A. If the answer was AORTA, then both As in MAMMA would be yellow.
dylan604 12 hours ago
Angostura 16 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
wlesieutre 14 hours ago
Only hundreds? I ended up on Thingiverse by accident yesterday it’s
RESPONSIBLE USE OF YOUR DATA
We and our 1022 partners…thi2 15 hours ago
No reject all button means a closed tab.
coldpie 14 hours 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 14 hours ago
Cookie consent usually also covers fingerprinting. Clearing cookies won't protect you from that, not giving your consent may in some jurisdictions.
coldpie 13 hours ago
tedmiston 14 hours ago
*browser extensions' job
gear54rus 16 hours ago
Ublock seems to work with this one.
dec0dedab0de 14 hours ago
Yeah, I didn't even see the popup
dontwordle 10 hours ago
Wow I can't believe this showed up on the front page years later. That'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!
flexie 16 hours ago
We are asked to allow hundreds of cookies, not just a few, to play the game.
Madmallard 15 hours ago
yes top of hacker news and loaded with tracking information and a popular game so likely to garner lots of attention
inigyou 15 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 14 hours ago
VonGallifrey 15 hours ago
markkat 13 hours 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.
weedfroglozenge 2 hours ago
This game got surprisingly big for what once was an LLM prompt "Create an opposite version of wordle and throw AdSense on it"
hollylawly 16 hours ago
Of course the one time I get it in 2 guesses is in this version
bonzini 16 hours ago
Got to the sixth attempt, 2 words remaining, of course I picked the right one.
stavros 16 hours ago
I picked the right one out of twelve.
amiga386 15 hours ago
rylando 16 hours ago
Well this sure makes Wordle feel a lot easier!
whoisnjogu 16 hours ago
and I still can't believe it took me more than 3 guesses
gcr 4 hours ago
This is great!
A couple years ago I adapted a quite similar concept for the PUCO 8: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=106664 My version allowed players to re-use letters though. Yours is much more interesting and challenging.
I remember being pretty proud of my compression system that let me fit several thousands of words on the cartridge.
MarioMan 9 hours ago
In the same vein, last year I took on a good old fashioned optimization problem for Worlde. Given a guess list and answer list, find all of the “perfectly bad” Worlde games in the shortest time. This means never reusing letters or finding any of the letters in the word. I got it from over 35 hours down to a mere 20 seconds.
Results and code here: https://github.com/SMarioMan/worst-wordle
apparent 3 hours ago
Pretty cool. I wonder at what point it makes sense to actually try to guess what the actual word is and then figure out which words you should guess in order to avoid it.
NikolaNovak 13 hours ago
Like it, but would love a "No Undo" option, or at least, "don't force undo".
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's OK, that's just your score for the day. Right now game forces me to undo if I have reduced option space to fewer words than there are remaining guesses, and that's quite annoying for how we'd want to play :)
huhtenberg 16 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 15 hours ago
And yet it didn’t accept JORTS :/
taneq 6 hours ago
Many places don’t accept jorts. :P
MarkusQ 15 hours ago
I can respect finding JORTS unacceptable.
dang 11 hours ago
Related:
Show HN: Can you lose at Wordle if you tried? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31572258 - May 2022 (236 comments)
grocery_stores 16 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 16 hours ago
It didn't let me guess things that had already been eliminated with gray tiles.
ChrisRR 16 hours ago
Isn't that rule 3?
pbronez 16 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.
gpvos 11 hours 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.
steinvakt2 14 hours 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
seeking_future 4 hours ago
hmm, if you quote unquote must use the letters locked in from the previous example, then they should be brought down to the previous row and locked in by default no? a robot could have fixed that for lessthan 5000 tokens i bet.
lucideer 15 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 14 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.
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 0lucideer 12 hours ago
Wordle hard mode (which I play) generally limits you to a similar degree as this game - it's less strict programmatically, but anyone willingly opting into hard mode is likely following the same rules as are enforced here.
So it should be the same.
(assuming here that you're deliberately attempting to lose this game).
quietbritishjim 13 hours ago
I think you really did just get lucky. It does pick a word up front at the start.
f2474l 14 hours ago
The game is cheating I guess
Murfalo 12 hours ago
* 12974
QAJAQ 1979
PZAZZ 861
OBANG 449
URARI 232
FLAFF 58
DWALM 10
(totally didn't cheat: https://github.com/murfalo/dontwordle-assistant)netsharc 16 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?
nullzzz 13 hours ago
The ads, the banners. Immediate exit.
theideaofcoffee 12 hours ago
Do you even adblock, bro.
embedding-shape 16 hours ago
This is amazing, and incredible difficult (or I'm terrible), after ~10 minutes I can't even get in a third guess!
catoc 10 hours 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…
So Don’t Access Don’t Wordle
theanonymousone 16 hours ago
I hope NYT lawyers don't come for you. They did for many other variants of this. Maybe reconsider the name?
lugao 16 hours ago
Do they go after people using similar names or just any game with similar mechanics?
xigoi 12 hours ago
IIUC, game mechanics are not copyrightable.
mh- 14 hours ago
Just the trademark, that I've seen.
noahlt 13 hours ago
This is a great demonstration of why Wordle’s Hard Mode is actually easier.
calfuris 5 hours ago
It puts a floor on the player's skill. That's not the same as being easier. There are game states that are certainly winnable without hard mode rules but do not allow the player to force a win in hard mode.
stanmancan 13 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.
MDTHLN 16 hours ago
This is quite fun, but I can’t believe the amount of cookies it wants to set!
whstl 16 hours ago
I had my ad blocker turned off temporarily and it was a strange experience.
tfrancisl 13 hours ago
Clicked expecting commentary on why playing NYTs wordle, and perhaps other games, was problematic for some reason. Found a game instead.
Folcon 16 hours ago
Is the word list complete?
I tried WEIRD and it rejected it as not a word
zabzonk 16 hours ago
that "i before e except after c" rule often gets taken too seriously
LuminousWzrd 15 hours ago
Oh I've messed that one up before
bigfishrunning 15 hours ago
i think it's kind of beautiful that weird is a weird word
hnlmorg 15 hours ago
rhplus 12 hours ago
I sense this is not winnable for all Wordle dictionary words. Is that provably the case?
dontwordle 9 hours ago
There are actually a very large number of solutions for every word. I once wrote an algorithm to enumerate all possible solutions for a given word and I was surprised at the results.
luciana1u 16 hours ago
finally a game that respects that I already know all five-letter words and would rather be told not to use them
jamesforestwest 12 hours ago
Funny idea, it turned out to be a bit more difficult than I thought
senfiaj 14 hours ago
You can use hints, after that I could find the right sequence
trash smash abash gnash quash clash
HelloUsername 14 hours ago
(Un)related; does anyone know where to play the non-NYT Wordle version?
teach 14 hours 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 14 hours ago
I'm sure someone has the original saved somewhere, I had it on an old work computer.
Velocifyer 9 hours ago
Why is the word “satan” not allowed?
mda 16 hours ago
I see that terrible cookie permission window (62 legitimate interest) and I close the window,
lugao 16 hours ago
It is too hard to be fun :P
mryingster 12 hours ago
Dang it. I accidentally got the word in two!!!
intrasight 16 hours ago
What does "you have already eliminated the letter T" mean?
codechicago277 16 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 16 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).
thomastjeffery 11 hours ago
Unfortunately, my goto starter word is 4 green letters.
It's pretty frustrating to immediately lose, and then have to undo to find out what the word was.
teo_zero 9 hours ago
If your first word is four greens it's actually pretty good: you get to know four letters to avoid with just one undo!
thomastjeffery 7 hours ago
Sure, but if you count undo as a partial game over (which is heavily implied), it's better to just be able to see what the word is and move on.
JoshTriplett 14 hours 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".
tantalor 15 hours ago
(meta comment) the chit chat about cookies is off topic and pointless
doctorpangloss 12 hours ago
Legitimately a much better game than actual Wordle.
phren0logy 16 hours ago
Be happ-ole? (Insert whistling)
wafflebot 10 hours ago
got it on 2nd turn. I am terrible at this.
massimodeluisa 16 hours ago
Ahahhaha funny! xD
burnt-resistor 16 hours ago
The goal isn't explained clearly and simply enough.
pasc1878 16 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?