'The New Wordle Editor Is Ruining Wordle' (slate.com) 96
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Slate, written by Lizzie O'Leary: When the New York Times announced, on November 7, that Wordle would have an editor, I didn't give it much thought. How much could the mere presence of a person really change it? Oh, how naive I was! Four days later, I got my answer. And that answer was MEDAL. MEDAL? On November 11th? Wait a minute -- was the Times punning with its Wordle on Veterans Day? Hmm. I was willing to chalk it up to a coincidence, until November 23rd, the day before Thanksgiving, one of the busiest travel days of the year when DRIVE appeared. I tapped angrily on my phone, muttering to myself. And then, on the day of the holiday itself? FEAST. This -- this was too much. My treasured mind awakener had gone soft. (Two days later came CLEAN. Harrumph.)
Folks (FOLKS), I do not want a punny Wordle. Wordle should not be cutesy, or themed, or even ironic. Wordle should stay hard and weird. No hints! Especially no thematic hints! People on Twitter should post their scores, and we should be able to scoff privately. Haha, what a loser; it took him four guesses! When the word is FEAST, you then must wonder: Did he intentionally take four guesses so as not to appear lame?? Wordle's very randomness is what makes it so great! It's why thousands of people play. And, I'd wager, why the Times eagerly shelled out in the "low seven figures" for it. The ability to guess the Wordle based on context clues that would appeal to Andy Borowitz is soul-crushing. Or, at the very least, quite annoying.
Folks (FOLKS), I do not want a punny Wordle. Wordle should not be cutesy, or themed, or even ironic. Wordle should stay hard and weird. No hints! Especially no thematic hints! People on Twitter should post their scores, and we should be able to scoff privately. Haha, what a loser; it took him four guesses! When the word is FEAST, you then must wonder: Did he intentionally take four guesses so as not to appear lame?? Wordle's very randomness is what makes it so great! It's why thousands of people play. And, I'd wager, why the Times eagerly shelled out in the "low seven figures" for it. The ability to guess the Wordle based on context clues that would appeal to Andy Borowitz is soul-crushing. Or, at the very least, quite annoying.
Whine, Gripe, Moans (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Whine, Gripe, Moans (Score:2, Troll)
Re: Whine, Gripe, Moans (Score:5, Informative)
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great reply
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needs award
Who cares (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a hard time caring about a game whose author whined and cried over "copycat" games, like he had invented something original or ground-breaking. The original game concept was developed 1955 (Jotto) and was a TV game show starting in the 80s that spanned decades (Lingo) and has been seen by millions in many different countries.
He wasn't even clever enough to come up with a name for the game that was 5 letters long.
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How sad would it be if I could only care about a game if and when I'd also like its author.
Then again, his complaints about copyists trying to profit from the game after he had made it free for anyone to play were not completely unfounded, either.
Re:Who cares (Score:4)
Then again, his complaints about copyists trying to profit from the game after he had made it free for anyone to play were not completely unfounded, either.
That's... entirely nonsensical. The comment you are replying to points out that the idea is not, in fact, novel--it is a repackaging of a concept that is almost 70 years old. If I create a Monopoly knockoff, then decree that "henceforth, this shall forever be free to play!" I don't have any moral ground to stand on and complain when someone else creates a Monopoly knockoff and monetizes it.
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after he had made it free for anyone to play
Are we talking about the same guy here? The one who sold the game to the NYT for over $1 million? Make game free to play, get lots of daily traffic, sell for a profit?
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Old business strategy. Get the marketing done then sell it to someone else so the business part of it can be their problem.
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His last name is Wardle, and he named the game Wordle... so, semi-clever.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Informative)
I mean, his name is "Wardle." Wordle is a perfectly fine name for a game that I'm sure blew up many times past his expectations.
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I really think a fair bit of the complaining amounts to sour grapes. The dude created the game for his girlfriend. It more or less just happened to go viral.
Seriously, would any of us have told the New York Times "no, thank you, keep your millions"?
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Plenty of similarities, but a single player game with no (major) time limit is unique. Apparently Lingo used random words but probably not out of such a large pool. The uniqueness is really the combination of that gameplay style as a single player game combined with sharable, no-spoiler scoring. Curated word lists ruin that by allowing a second way to guess the word without relying on just the letters.
A copycat game might take over if it continues down this path, but it's like social media. Without a cr
Re:Who cares (Score:4, Funny)
The original game concept was developed 1955 (Jotto) and was a TV game show starting in the 80s that spanned decades (Lingo) and has been seen by millions in many different countries.
Sure, but this version is "on the Internet" ... so, HUGE difference. :-)
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Yes. His version is lame and has less space than a Nomad. ie, it's not the game concept itself. It's the implementation, trademark, etc. This one was wildly popular when the Times bought it. The others were mostly forgotten.
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It also has zero advertisements. That's a major plus, and something almost unheard of in the social media age.
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He wasn't even clever enough to come up with a name for the game that was 5 letters long.
It's a pun on the Author's own name, Wardle.
Wordle is a game of chance (Score:1)
There might be some skill in the form of an extensive vocabulary involved, but other than that, it's pretty much about getting lucky and guessing right, so whoever wrote this takes the game entirely too seriously
Re:Wordle is a game of chance (Score:4, Funny)
I preferred it when you could peek at the source code and know what the next ten day's words would be.
Then post them on social media to annoy people.
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If the source code tells you that, somewhere a developer needs chastising.
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If the source code tells you that, somewhere a developer needs chastising.
That's just stupid.
If you want to cheat you can just play it in a private tab and/or spam some preprepared letter patterns.
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Not sure why you responded with that. I make no claims about cheating/honesty. I'm just saying that you should not be able to derive which word was picked on which day from the source. And if it's so linear that the code reveals it, the developer screwed up.
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Yes and that's stupid. Why does it matter if it's easy to derive? It's a game that's trivially easy to cheat but no fun to. There's no stakes. If you want to know the word, who cares, go nuts.
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It's a question of design, that's why. That's like consulting the source code for your accounting software to see your predicted balance on the first of the month.
You don't hard code a sequence of "random" word selections in code. That's the data, and it belongs in a data store.
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The design is completely appropriate. A key design decision was that everyone would be playing the same word for the whole day. Once you know that, then you know the only people that you have to protect from secret are the people that don't want to know. Placing the word in the source code is more than sufficient for that group.
NYT made a nice improvement in this regard. When you come back to the game, the board is concealed by default. This way if you are using someone else's phone and they left their
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It's a question of design, that's why.
It's a small, consequence free game.
You don't hard code a sequence of "random" word selections in code. That's the data, and it belongs in a data store.
Out of interest, are you an enterprise architect? Because you certainly know how to massively overcomplicate simple things.
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If the source code tells you that, somewhere a developer needs chastising.
The original Wordle had a big list of words in the JavaScript and went through them in sequence one day at a time.
You could know every future word just by opening the source code and searching for today's word.
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Why? The game is just a Javascript page that's completely standalone. You could just save the page to your hard drive and play the original edition as much as you want. There is no server side interaction, it's all done locally. It uses cookies to save your score, that's about it.
It's a game anyone can host themselves and requires no special server side scripts or anything.
Hint: that's why people liked it. It worked offline!
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I respectfully disagree. Like many popular games, it is a blend of luck and skill. The luck element means that it can be enjoyed by beginners, who can sometimes enjoy getting a better score than somebody who takes it more seriously. On average, I would guess that a good Wordle player would equal or beat the score of a novice 75%-80% of the time.
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You don't need an extensive vocab... 5x6 = 30
26 letters in the alphabet
Maximize frequently used letters in early words (vowels, common consonants - don't reuse any consonants until you have at least 4 known letters (and don't reuse vowels unless absolutely neccasery)
This strategy has made it so I have not missed any wordles... none... zero failures... In almost a year... No I might not be getting solves on the second try, but by maximizing letter use this way, there's really only one valid word left by th
doesn't work (Score:2)
*itch for example. Unless you've go that in the first three rows then you can lose.
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If you play on hard mode then you have a point. If you have *itch on word 4, play HOPED. If you got no hits, it's the W. It won't be the B. And this is assuming that you have ruled out none of the potential hits at that point.
Re: doesn't work (Score:2)
litch, sitch
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Nymph?
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It's not really a game of chance. My own statistics tell me that. And I don't remember seeing words that were obtuse. If you've got one of five on row one, picking the next one means figuring out words that maximize "searching". i.e. if you get no letters in the next four, you cover 16 discrete possibilities, and even your last guess can be targeted well.
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You can use information theory to increase your performance in the game.
That is, choose initial letters by their frequency of occurrence in English usage.
Choose remaining letters in subsequent rows by same principle.
i.e. Find words that employ the most of most frequently used letters.
Also, initially don't use repeated letters because you lose information-gain.
The curated version also seems to, unfortunately, involve a level of choosing
"dumbed-down" words for the masses as it were
Still playing? (Score:4, Insightful)
People still play this game? I hadn't heard it mentioned in a long time,
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Yeah... I have some "friends" on Facebook who still post their daily wins. Oy.
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Have you heard Scrabble or Monopoly being mentioned lately? ;-)
Re: Still playing? (Score:2)
Yes, I heard Monopoly mentioned less than a week ago.
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People still play this game? I hadn't heard it mentioned in a long time,
Yes. My wife plays each day against my Perl script to see who can get the answer first. She's now 6 ahead and I need to do something about how it handles repeated letters.
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Maybe only subscribers see them. Non-subscribers would probably leave, but if you have money invested....
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I play with Firefox on iPad and see no ads as firefox blocks them.
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I play it most days. It's a fun little diversion that doesn't require too much energy or time.
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Same here. I also play a geography game called Worldle [teuteuf.fr] that's both fun and educational.
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It's something I do every morning while I finish my coffee. It's a nice way to activate my brain, without taking up too much time.
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I'm guilty of doing Wordle and Nerdle during a coffee break each day.
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People still play this game? I hadn't heard it mentioned in a long time,
You know people still play Pokémon Go right? Don't let the news cycle fool you. Things are trendy *to talk about* only briefly and then the news cycle moves onto the next thing while the underlying thing they were talking about continues unabated.
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Hey man (Score:2)
Don't get too attached to things... Learn to let go.
\/\/hatever (Score:2)
Why not try one of the umpty-jillion wordle clones?
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Or try this one: Try this one: https://duotrigordle.com/ [duotrigordle.com]
Solve 32 wordles^WLingos simultaneously.
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Oh my. I've been doing the 4 and 8 as well for fun. The 8 added a "save" mode where you have 9 guesses to get all 8 from someone that didn't guess well for the first four words so I love that challenge.
Try pedantle instead (Score:2)
They only have to edit one word. (Score:2)
Even a Slashdot Editor kud doe thaat.
With only a couple of dupes a week.
Bad publicity? (Score:2)
Hey, look. we're talking about Wordle again. And mentioning its deep-pocketed patron by name.
Opinion (Score:5, Funny)
Who is posting drive by opinion pieces from Slate of all places on Slashdot? Surely we haven't ran out of news today. I mean, give it like fifteen more minutes or something. I am sure Musk will Tweet something about how Apple is literally the Nazis, Netflix is announcing their new series "Woke IT Department", or something similarly mind numbingly dull. Who the hell in Slashdot editors was like "Yep. Let's put that on the front page."?
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...give it like fifteen more minutes or something. I am sure Musk will Tweet something about how Apple is literally the Nazis, Netflix is announcing their new series "Woke IT Department"...
I love how you're bitching about weak Slashdot content, as if that bullshit is a wonderful viable alternative.
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I love how you're bitching about weak Slashdot content, as if that bullshit is a wonderful viable alternative
Oh no, the irony is not lost on me. I type this as I see my comment has been scored +3 Insightful. So I mean, I guess I got my answer on why the original article was posted here, because you're right, my comment is hot garbage. Hate boners don't jerk themselves apparently.
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I mean, there's this one, the one about the shitty 25 lines of code book editor, AND EVERY STORY THE SLASHDOT EDITORS EVER POST.
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Regarding Musk and Apple... Elon basically pulled an Emily Litella yesterday - "it was all a misunderstanding, never mind!"
About 40% of Ukraine has no electricity or water (Score:2)
Favorite Wordle Clone - Octordle (Score:2)
You have 13 guesses to solve 8 different words. A common strategy is to start with 4 words that use as many letters as possible, allowing you to make 1 mistake as you guess the 8 remaining words.
If that's too easy, try the "Rescue" game. The website chooses 4 hopeless words for you, giving you a very limited amount of information with which to win the game. If you can win more than 50% of the time, you're pretty good.
https://octordle.com/ [octordle.com]
https://octordle.com/free-resc... [octordle.com]
I quit on FEAST (Score:2)
I had played back when it went viral, and then staretd playing again some months later on Hard Mode (which made it a bit more interesting). It's not a hard game, but it was a nice little puzzle to solve in a minute or two in the morning.
Somewhat interestingly, my number of answer attempts was an almost perfect normal distribution.
I quit on FEAST. Trite, hackneyed, and just plain stupid.
Sedecordle or the variant sedecorder is still a bit interesting.
The bright interstitial screens when Iâ(TM)ve (Score:1)
Iâ(TM)m paying for the NYT and not noticing too many ads, but the screens that have bright backgrounds between the ones that are dark are annoying. I also think there are poorly written styles that render some pages bright before correcting to dark.
The FEAST entry bothered me, but as long as they donâ(TM)t start repeating words it was more of a shared annoyance to commiserate with friends.
What? (Score:2)
I may date myself now, or maybe I even have to hand in my geek card, but I still think you might want to have started with the explanation what this "Wordle" is.
Time to switch to decaf (Score:3)
Is the author not aware that crossword puzzles (which people get waaaaay more serious about) have had topical themes for decades? A tour-de-force was the NYTimes crossword on Election Day 1996. They had arranged the main clues and the crossword clues to make it possible to solve it either to say "CLINTON ELECTED" or "BOBDOLE ELECTED". [link [youtube.com]] [another link [youtube.com]]
First World problem ... (Score:3)
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And? First world problems are none the less problems. People who live in the first world and don't have third world problems don't suddenly lose the ability to whine about their lives. Just because someone is starving in Africa doesn't mean that's the only issue everyone should care about.
People get fanatical about things and don't like it when they get ruined. How many times have you bitched about the Windows 11 start menu being cantered or systemd becoming the default init system of Debian?
Good. (Score:2)
This is slashdot (Score:1)
Kiddies (Score:2)
Wordle is crossword for kiddies. Grow up and do the Times crosswords.
Wow (Score:3)
Someone needs to switch to decaf, then have their diaper changed, and be out down for a nap
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Someone needs to switch to decaf, then have their diaper changed, and be out down for a nap
Yeah. It's easy to shit on something someone else loves. What do you really love that we can ruin and then insult you about?
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Need your diaper changed I see...
Wordle and its way with words (Score:1)
I know what todayâ(TM)s is (Score:2)
_ _ A _ E
Irene Cara just passed away.
Yep it has to be
P H A M E
Whocares (Score:2)
Nobody cares what your score is. At least among those that dont play the game.
Seriously.
Wasn't this predicted? (Score:2)
Backspace (Score:2)
Could they not just bind backspace, so it doesn't go to the previous page on my browser?