Hard Mode in Wordle

I don't have to use Hard Mode in Wordle but I instinctively do, even though I've not altered the default setting. See Figure 1.

Figure 1

Setting Hard Mode to on or just adhering to it by choice can make things difficult. Today's Wordle is a good example. See Figure 2.

Figure 2

I was very happy to have guessed four out of the five letters after two tries. I was left with SHA*E and only one letter left to guess. Unfortunately, there were many possible words: SHADE, SHAKE, SHALE, SHAME, SHAPE, SHARE and SHAVE. I had the seven valid letter choices of D, K, L, M, P, R and V. 

If I'd gone by letter frequencies, highest to lowest, I wouldn't have made it. "K" has the lowest frequency of all the letters. I was lucky to get the correct word on my last try. See Figure 3 for a graph of letter frequencies in the English language.

Figure 3: source

Setting Hard Mode to off or relaxing my voluntary adherence to that mode, would it have been possible to get the correct answer for certain using my remaining four tries? What if I started with a word like PROVE? That would eliminate P, R and V with only four letters remaining: D, K, L and M. A word like MOULD would eliminate M, L and D with only K remaining. So yes, I could have definitely gotten the correct word on my fifth try.

So Hard Mode is aptly named because it does make guessing the correct word much more difficult in situations such as I encountered with COAST and SHADE.

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".