Binary Wordle

(wordle.chengeric.com)

258 points | by eh8 2 days ago

45 comments

  • AmsterErdo 1 day ago
    I think I don't get it... since it's binary, it can always be guessed in two attempts?
    • gamerDude 1 day ago
      It took me 10 tries...
    • williamdclt 1 day ago
      I _think_ it's humorous!
    • awwaiid 1 day ago
      Yes. You can still try to get it in one attempt.
      • brookst 1 day ago
        Odds in one attempt: 1 in 32

        Odds in two attempts: 1 in 1

        • dskloet 1 day ago
          Your odds add up to more than 1.
          • pteetor 1 day ago
            Probabilities sum to 1.0. Odds don't sum.
          • tonmoy 1 day ago
            Odds of getting it within 2 attempts is 1. Odds of getting it on exactly the second attempt is 31/32
        • xandrius 1 day ago
          Ooops:

          You won!

          You guessed 01111 in 4 attempts!

          • brookst 14 hours ago
            Well yeah and a fair coin has P(heads) == P(tails) == 0 for someone who eats it.
    • sashank_1509 1 day ago
      I’m glad I figured that out after my first attempt. I feel smart lol.
  • igitur 1 day ago
    I'm waiting for the NY Times to sue this one too.[1]

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

  • tylerchr 1 day ago
    My wife took one look at this and said “It’s not Wordle if it’s all binary—it’s Digitle.”
  • umvi 1 day ago
    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 1 day ago
      Someone should make a base-26 version! It would probably be super popular!
  • Aissen 1 day ago
    I love that someone went all the way to write and publish this joke. Keep hacking!
  • asimovDev 1 day ago
    https://horsle.glitch.me reminds me of this
    • tetris11 1 day ago
      quite difficult, there aren't many horse anagrams
  • patrakov 2 days ago
    Step 1: Guess 00000.

    Step 2: Replace all grey cells with 1s.

    • 0xAFFFF 1 day ago
      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 1 day ago
        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 1 day ago
          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 1 day ago
            I think displaying black or white pixels makes a bigger difference.
          • bdcs 1 day ago
            > 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 1 day ago
      And for a second, I was proud that I solved mine in 3 steps...
    • paxys 1 day ago
      Step 1: Guess anything

      Step 2: Flip all the non green cells.

      • underlines 1 day ago
        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 1 day ago
          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 1 day ago
          It's still two steps. You only ever need to flip wrong digits.
    • jesse__ 1 day ago
      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 1 day ago
        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 1 day ago
        It's not guaranteed you will always win in 2 steps because occasionally you will win in 1 step.
        • Supermancho 1 day ago
          Isn't 1 within the bounds of 2?
          • Sohcahtoa82 1 day ago
            There's a difference between "in 2 steps" and "within 2 steps".
            • Supermancho 1 day ago
              Splitting hairs seems like grammar policing. I can even see action 1 and null action if I squint hard enough.
      • selcuka 1 day ago
        Yes. Yellow and grey mean exactly the same thing in this game: Flip it.
      • IAmBroom 1 day ago
        Hoping that you are being sarcastic...
    • stavros 1 day ago
    • petra303 2 days ago
      Yea, you don’t need more than two chances.
      • bbassett 2 days ago
        and now we know how raid parity works
        • topato 1 day ago
          This is some how the most concise description of parity ever
    • a3w 1 day ago
      I think I saw a two.

      There is no such thing as a two, Bender!

    • Sesse__ 1 day ago
      I intended this strategy, but 00000 happened to be correct, so I didn't even need a step 2.
    • arjvik 2 days ago
      Came here to present my strategy for solving it in two tries, and realized it was far more complicated! (started with 00011)
  • zck 1 day ago
    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.

  • abotsis 1 day ago
    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 1 day ago
      It's not supposed to be fun or hard, it's supposed to be funny. It's absurdist humor.
  • James-Livesey 1 day ago
    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 1 day ago
      The hint actually makes it harder since I was required to guess a 0 and a F each time
  • NoSalt 1 day ago
    I did it in two attempts ... read it and weep, suckas!
  • NotAnOtter 1 day ago
    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 2 days ago
    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 2 days ago
      You may not need the refresh, with Safari I have to select the game board again after focus is moved by clicking "play again".
  • mulmen 1 day ago
    Got it in 10.
    • Black616Angel 1 day ago
      I was a bit sad, when it didn't display my number of tries as a 10.
    • mccolin 1 day ago
      There’s 10 types of people in this world: those that get that joke and those that don’t.
      • makerofthings 1 day ago
        There are 2 kinds of people in this world, those that can extrapolate from incomplete data.
        • taneq 1 day ago
          And fence post errors.
      • rodnim 1 day ago
        And those who know this joke is actually in base 3. :)
  • lazerman 1 day ago
    The number of guesses should be written in binary too!
  • bitwrangler 1 day ago
    I like the UI and cute idea, nice animation. great way to learn xor $FF haha.
  • bentt 13 hours ago
    If this kind of troll app is what we can expect from our vibe coded future, then I'm all for it.
  • nickburlett 1 day ago
    Feature request: a "share" button, à la base-26 Wordle.
  • soneca 1 day ago
    I guessed my first game in the first attempt! (10011)
  • dhsysusbsjsi 1 day ago
    I guessed 00000 and won first go!
  • kylec 1 day ago
    Got it in one on my second game! Felt pretty good till I realized that's like 1/32 chance.
    • selcuka 1 day ago
      The probability of getting it right at least once in your first 2 attempts is even higher (6.15%).
  • clocker 1 day ago
    Nice game. I got the answer in 1 try in my first attempt!

    https://imgur.com/a/W4OjObH

  • meindnoch 1 day ago
    It's not wordle. It's bytle.
  • NooneAtAll3 1 day ago
    recently I encountered a game that had "wordle, but with numbers" as one of its puzzles

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

  • seabass 1 day ago
    I love that not only are the inputs binary, but so are the results.
  • citizenfishy 1 day ago
    Isn't this just Mastermind?
    • maaaaattttt 1 day ago
      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 1 day ago
        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 1 day ago
      No, this is much simpler.
    • jansan 1 day ago
      More like Minionmind.
  • drdec 1 day ago
    With this game, there is no try. There is do or do not.
  • sarmadgulzar 1 day ago
    So, this can be solved in at least one and at most two attempts.
  • neuroelectron 1 day ago
    I see what you did there
  • celticninja 1 day ago
    Isn't it always possible to get this on guess 2?
  • kcaseg 1 day ago
    Bit masking : the game
  • sidcool 1 day ago
    It should be solvable in no more than 2 moves.
  • b0a04gl 1 day ago
    bitmask bruteforce took 5 ops max.solving fizzbuzz with a GPU.
  • lo_zamoyski 1 day ago
    Why 5 rows? Just have two.
  • itishappy 2 days ago
    Is it possible to get yellow cells?
    • Jtsummers 2 days ago
      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.
      • itishappy 1 day ago
        Huh, surprisingly difficult to get. Took me 8 or so attempts.
  • october8140 1 day ago
    Got it. Second try.
  • alloysmila 1 day ago
    only two attempts are ever needed :-(
  • HenryBemis 1 day ago
    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 1 day ago
      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 1 day ago
      That didn't get it?

      No, sadly.

  • schindlabua 1 day ago
    Hilariously dumb
  • nicwolff 1 day ago
    I, uh, got it in two. Is it creepy that the answer is my ZIP code?
  • odo1242 1 day ago
    I somehow got lucky and guessed the answer in just one try lol
    • rossant 1 day ago
      How lucky of you. You had one chance out of 100000.