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Binary Wordle

wordle.chengeric.com

262 points by eh8 · 139 comments

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40 threads
AmsterErdo

I think I don't get it... since it's binary, it can always be guessed in two attempts?

tylerchr

My wife took one look at this and said “It’s not Wordle if it’s all binary—it’s Digitle.”

igitur

I'm waiting for the NY Times to sue this one too.[1]

[1] https://apnews.com/article/new-york-times-wordle-clones-take...

umvi

Binary is too easy, but hex can be tricky. I made a hex-based wordle puzzle for my programming game where you have to guess an 8-digit hex string in as few as 6-12 guesses using wordle mechanics... called the level "dwordle" :)

(video from like 3 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity2D/comments/sq4anb/i_added_a_w...)

  • charly187

    Someone should make a base-26 version! It would probably be super popular!

Aissen

I love that someone went all the way to write and publish this joke. Keep hacking!

patrakov

Step 1: Guess 00000.

Step 2: Replace all grey cells with 1s.

  • 0xAFFFF

    This is obviously improper. The valid strategy for this game unfolds as follows.

    Step 1: Guess 11111.

    Step 2: Replace all grey cells with 0s.

    Thank you for your careful consideration.

    • nmeofthestate

      If you start with 0's you save a small amount of electricity. 1's use up more electricity - any electronic engineer will agree.

      • justsid

        Not to ruin a joke, but does it actually make a difference for SRAM? It’s two inverters in a loop, despite not being the same size they are active components. But I’m also a software guy so I could be totally wrong.

        • dskloet

          I think displaying black or white pixels makes a bigger difference.

        • bdcs

          > does it actually make a difference for SRAM?

          I have no idea in practice. But for the thermodynamic limit of actually making a difference, any irreversible change requires heat to be generated, e.g. initializing to zero, truncating, or bitshifts with discarded information. In contrast, addition/subtraction/multiplication/bitshifts without over-/under- flow will not necessarily generate heat.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle

          PS. you can also use mass-energy equivalence to extend this to calculate the lower limit of mass for a given quantity of information. TL;DR: The internet weighs 50g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaUzu-iksi8

  • heckelson

    And for a second, I was proud that I solved mine in 3 steps...

  • paxys

    Step 1: Guess anything

    Step 2: Flip all the non green cells.

    • underlines

      afaik, guessing anything not 00000 or 11111 at first step will lead to an optimum strategy of 3 steps. because you introduce possible "right digit at wrong place" as a third state.

      guessing 00000 or 11111 removes that third state and leaves you with simple substitution of wrong cells, which leads to an optimal 2 step strategy.

      but obviously the shortest strategy is just guessing it right on the first try :D lol

      • paxys

        It doesn't matter.

        Right digit at the wrong place = wrong digit = you should flip it.

        This puzzle won't take more than 2 guesses no matter what you input the first time.

      • Jtsummers

        It's still two steps. You only ever need to flip wrong digits.

  • jesse__

    I think it's actually possible to win on the second guess with any initial input. Or at least I did it a handful of times..

    • vikingerik

      This should be correct. For any cell that isn't green after your first guess, there's only one other possibility for its value.

    • dskloet

      It's not guaranteed you will always win in 2 steps because occasionally you will win in 1 step.

    • selcuka

      Yes. Yellow and grey mean exactly the same thing in this game: Flip it.

    • IAmBroom

      Hoping that you are being sarcastic...

  • petra303

    Yea, you don’t need more than two chances.

  • stavros
  • a3w

    I think I saw a two.

    There is no such thing as a two, Bender!

  • Sesse__

    I intended this strategy, but 00000 happened to be correct, so I didn't even need a step 2.

  • arjvik

    Came here to present my strategy for solving it in two tries, and realized it was far more complicated! (started with 00011)

asimovDev

https://horsle.glitch.me reminds me of this

abotsis

Yea, it’s too easy. Maybe if it were a “guess the number” but in binary? Hints are just “too high” or “too low”?

…though now that I’m playing it in my head that’s too easy too. (Start at MSB and shift right if too high and add bits if too low)…

Maybe if you reduced the number of guesses to 5 that’d add enough chance to make it fun?

  • TheDong

    It's not supposed to be fun or hard, it's supposed to be funny. It's absurdist humor.

zck

I also made some number-based wordle-variants, which I call "numberdle". I found that it was hard to come up with good ways of guessing because wordle has the restriction that most combinations are invalid. You won't ever have to guess xwqqf, because that's not an English word. And more importantly, guessing some letters gives you information about the other letters. If you find out three letters, and have the target as _a_ts, you can use that to figure out the other two letters.

But if you need to guess a number, and you know it's _5_34, having three correct digits don't help you figure it out.

So I made some variants where guessed values do help you figure out the correct answer.

In rationerdle (https://zck.org/numberdle/?variant=rationerdle), you have to guess a rational number x/y, where both x and y are between 1 and 99, inclusive. It displays the rational number you actually guessed, and whether x and y separately are too high or too low.

In factordle (https://zck.org/numberdle/?variant=factordle), the player has to guess the factors of a target number.

In formuladle (https://zck.org/numberdle/?variant=formuladle), there is a graphed straight line, and the player has to guess the mx+b formula that graphs that line.

I would like to make more, but didn't have any other great ideas when I ran out of interest.

James-Livesey

If anyone's in need of a hexadecimal version... https://jamesl.me/hexle/

I similarly made a binary one before this version, but unsurprisingly, a lot of people said they found it too easy!

  • charlie-83

    The hint actually makes it harder since I was required to guess a 0 and a F each time

NoSalt

I did it in two attempts ... read it and weep, suckas!

mulmen

Got it in 10.

NotAnOtter

This delivers on the title but I wonder if you could tweak it to make it an actual game without wildly overcomplicating it.

Maybe make the string much longer, like 10 bits, and the game only matches on substrings longer than 3. 000...000 would generally return no matches.

That's still probably solvable with superpermutations but wordle is "solvable" with a dictionary, so don't let perfect be the enemy of "better than 2 guess bordle"

thehours

Feedback: I'm unable to input with keyboard after typing anything but '0' until a full refresh (and selecting the input area with mouse).

  • Jtsummers

    You may not need the refresh, with Safari I have to select the game board again after focus is moved by clicking "play again".

lazerman

The number of guesses should be written in binary too!

bitwrangler

I like the UI and cute idea, nice animation. great way to learn xor $FF haha.

nikkaelle

Feature request: a "share" button, à la base-26 Wordle.

dhsysusbsjsi

I guessed 00000 and won first go!

soneca

I guessed my first game in the first attempt! (10011)

kylec

Got it in one on my second game! Felt pretty good till I realized that's like 1/32 chance.

  • selcuka

    The probability of getting it right at least once in your first 2 attempts is even higher (6.15%).

clocker

Nice game. I got the answer in 1 try in my first attempt!

https://imgur.com/a/W4OjObH

bentt

If this kind of troll app is what we can expect from our vibe coded future, then I'm all for it.

meindnoch

It's not wordle. It's bytle.

HenryBemis

So....

1st line, all zeros. It shows me where the zeros are.

Well.. that's it. Any non-zero is a 1.

So.. finished on the second line.

Am I the only one?

  • morcus

    Yeah, it's definitely meant to be a joke.

    You also don't need to start with all zeros, any input will allow you to finish on the second try.

  • IAmBroom

    That didn't get it?

    No, sadly.

citizenfishy

Isn't this just Mastermind?

  • maaaaattttt

    Apologies for opening a tangeant on a tangeant, but am I the only one who thinks there are 2 levels of playing master mind (and therefore wordle)? Easy level, you let the player know exactly which spots are correctly placed and which ones are there but incorrectly placed. Hard level, you let the player know only that some are correctly placed and some are there but incorrectly placed without identifiying which ones. I personnaly don't enjoy the easy level when playing mastermind, but I do enjoy the hard version which is much more investigative and in my opinion triggers the same brain process as when I'm debugging code.

    • madcaptenor

      I don’t think I’ve ever seen Wordle implemented in what you call “hard level”. But there’s no reason it couldn’t be.

  • zaik

    No, this is much simpler.

  • jansan

    More like Minionmind.

NooneAtAll3

recently I encountered a game that had "wordle, but with numbers" as one of its puzzles

https://semenar.itch.io/lost-in-space

lo_zamoyski

Why 5 rows? Just have two.

seabass

I love that not only are the inputs binary, but so are the results.

sarmadgulzar

So, this can be solved in at least one and at most two attempts.

neuroelectron

I see what you did there

kcaseg

Bit masking : the game

drdec

With this game, there is no try. There is do or do not.

celticninja

Isn't it always possible to get this on guess 2?

sidcool

It should be solvable in no more than 2 moves.

itishappy

Is it possible to get yellow cells?

  • Jtsummers

    Use a mix of 0s and 1s, if the answer is "00110" and you put in "11000" you'll have 4 yellow and 1 green. If you use only 0s or only 1s for your first guess, you'll just get green and grey, no yellow.

october8140

Got it. Second try.

alloysmila

only two attempts are ever needed :-(

schindlabua

Hilariously dumb

nicwolff

I, uh, got it in two. Is it creepy that the answer is my ZIP code?

odo1242

I somehow got lucky and guessed the answer in just one try lol

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