Intertwined Words

I regularly play Word Master on my iPhone that requires one word to be linked to another by at least one letter. I got to thinking of pairs of words that link completely.

For two letters words, it's rather trivial. For example:

B A

E N

For three letter words, it's also not difficult. For example:

R A T

E T A

As the words get longer, the match-ups become more difficult but still possible for four letter words. For example:

T O R E

A R E A

Of course, looking at the previous example, you might accept TA, OR and RE as legitimate words but what about EA? Well, we need to agree on some reference source and the SCRABBLE DICTIONARY is as good a source as any. Referring to this we find that EA is indeed a word. 

EA: the Babylonian god of wisdom; son of Apsu and father of Marduk; counterpart of the Sumerian Enki; as one of the supreme triad including Anu and Bel he was assigned controlof the watery element.

What about a five letter match-up? It can be noted that alternating between vowels and consonents makes the match-ups easier to find. Difficult consonants, like C and V are to be avoided at all costs become there are very few two letter words to be formed from them.

 B A K E D
A B A T E

BA, AB, KA, ET and DE are all legitimate words according to the SCRABBLE DICTIONARY. What about a six letter match-up?

A B A T E D
D E N O T E

It's not that difficult but watching three words together would be more challenging. Anyway, just introducing the notion of "intertwined words" (for want of a better term).

More Word Game Adventures

Following on from my previous post, my word game adventures continue. I was a bit late coming to the party but eventually discovered Wordle. Although I'd seen many mentions of it, it didn't really tweak my curiosity until I read about a guy who built a freely accessible archive of all the words used by Wordle since its inception.

But firstly, for those not in the know, what is Wordle? Well, there's a full account of the phenomenon on Wikipedia so there's no need to repeat all of that here. Suffice to say that it is web-based and only one challenge is presented each day. Figure 1 shows the help screen that summarises the way the game is played.

Figure 1

It is similar to the board game Mastermind that I used to play back in 70's and 80's. However, the game involved determining the colours of four hidden pegs rather than five unknown letters. See Figure 2.

Figure 2: Mastermind

Figure 3 shows my completed Wordle for today, February 5th 2022.

Figure 3

The site that contains the archive of all previous words used in Wordle is located here. Figure 4 shows my latest attempt, although make a mistake while completing it if you look closely.

Figure 4

Wordle has spawned many clones of course given its growing popularity. Meanwhile I continue to play Word Master at the highest level and win more times than I lose. Figures 5 and 6 show the screen and statistics for my latest narrow win.

Figure 5

Figure 6

Getting back to Wordle however, and we find that:

The New York Times Co. bought the popular word game Wordle on Jan. 31 from the game’s creator, Josh Wardle, for a price “in the low seven figures,” according to an article from The New York Times. Source.

The price "in the low seven figures" means that he must have received more that one million dollars since 1000000 is the first number to have seven digits. The game remains free at the moment but whether that will be the case in the future is unknown.

There is an Indonesian copy of the game, KATLA, that can also be played in the web browser at the URL https://katla.vercel.app/. I tested it out and managed to find the word in four tries. See Figure 7 for a screenshot.

Figure 7

Of course, this not the way to share your results on social media. Instead when one shares, a series of shaded and unshaded boxes are generated to indicate your progress without revealing the actual letters as shown below:

⬛⬛🟨 🟨 ⬛

🟨 🟨 ⬛⬛⬛

🟩 🟨 ⬛🟨 🟨

🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩

The game is clearly a good way for me to improve my Indonesian vocabulary. For example, the word "prabu" means "king" which must have come from Sanskrit because the similar word in Hindi, "prabhu", means "lord".