Friday, April 01, 2022

Sometimes, I hate Wordle.

 

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This brings up an intriguing Wordle challenge: What is the worst possible combination of solution and guesses such that, even if you got 4/5 totally correct on your first guess, you might still have to guess several more times to nail it? Put another way, how many five-letter words are there that differ in precisely one letter at the same position?

Today's solution (partial spoiler) shows that there is a set of five words that differ in just one letter in the same position. Is there a set of six? Or worse?

BONUS: My mathie brain revels in the challenge of Nerdle, which has the delightful additional feature of letting you put in character guesses in arbitrary order, so you can fill in what you know for your next guess, while pondering the rest.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bound
Hound
Mound
Pound
Round
Sound
Wound

Anonymous said...

My Wordle 243
SHARE, SHAPE, SHAME, SHADE, SHAVE, SHAKE

Alison

CC said...

Ooooh, nicely done.

CC said...

Wait, you missed "found".

Anonymous said...

LOL! I had to leave one for you.

Foog said...

Quordle is a fun variant - you have to guess 4 words and get 9 guesses.

www.quordle.com

And if you want a real brain buster, try sedecordle. 16 words and 21 guesses.

www.sedecordle.com