Binary Wordle

wordle.chengeric.com

259 points

eh8

2 days ago


139 comments

AmsterErdo 2 days ago

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

  • gamerDude 2 days ago

    It took me 10 tries...

  • awwaiid 2 days ago

    Yes. You can still try to get it in one attempt.

    • brookst 2 days ago

      Odds in one attempt: 1 in 32

      Odds in two attempts: 1 in 1

      • dskloet 2 days ago
        3 more

        Your odds add up to more than 1.

        • pteetor a day ago

          Probabilities sum to 1.0. Odds don't sum.

        • tonmoy 2 days ago

          Odds of getting it within 2 attempts is 1. Odds of getting it on exactly the second attempt is 31/32

      • xandrius 2 days ago
        2 more

        Ooops:

        You won!

        You guessed 01111 in 4 attempts!

        • brookst 17 hours ago

          Well yeah and a fair coin has P(heads) == P(tails) == 0 for someone who eats it.

  • sashank_1509 a day ago

    I’m glad I figured that out after my first attempt. I feel smart lol.

tylerchr 2 days ago

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

umvi 2 days 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 2 days ago

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

patrakov 2 days ago

Step 1: Guess 00000.

Step 2: Replace all grey cells with 1s.

  • 0xAFFFF 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days ago
        3 more

        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 2 days ago

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

        • bdcs 2 days 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 2 days ago

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

  • paxys 2 days ago

    Step 1: Guess anything

    Step 2: Flip all the non green cells.

    • underlines 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days ago

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

  • jesse__ 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days ago

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

      • Supermancho a day ago
        3 more

        Isn't 1 within the bounds of 2?

        • Sohcahtoa82 a day ago
          2 more

          There's a difference between "in 2 steps" and "within 2 steps".

          • Supermancho a day ago

            Splitting hairs seems like grammar policing. I can even see action 1 and null action if I squint hard enough.

    • selcuka 2 days ago

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

    • IAmBroom 2 days ago

      Hoping that you are being sarcastic...

  • 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 2 days ago

        This is some how the most concise description of parity ever

  • Sesse__ 2 days 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 a 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 2 days 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 2 days ago

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

James-Livesey 2 days 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 2 days ago

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

NotAnOtter 2 days 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"

mulmen 2 days ago

Got it in 10.

  • Black616Angel 2 days ago

    I was a bit sad, when it didn't display my number of tries as a 10.

  • mccolin 2 days ago

    There’s 10 types of people in this world: those that get that joke and those that don’t.

    • makerofthings 2 days ago

      There are 2 kinds of people in this world, those that can extrapolate from incomplete data.

      • taneq 2 days ago

        And fence post errors.

    • rodnim 2 days ago

      And those who know this joke is actually in base 3. :)

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".

lazerman 2 days ago

The number of guesses should be written in binary too!

bitwrangler 2 days ago

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

bentt 15 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 2 days ago

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

soneca 2 days ago

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

  • drooopy 2 days ago

    Guessed my first game in 2 attempts.

  • teekert 2 days ago

    What are the odds!

    • soneca 2 days ago

      3.125% I believe :)

dhsysusbsjsi 2 days ago

I guessed 00000 and won first go!

kylec 2 days ago

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

  • selcuka 2 days ago

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

seabass 2 days ago

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

citizenfishy 2 days ago

Isn't this just Mastermind?

  • maaaaattttt 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days ago

    No, this is much simpler.

  • jansan 2 days ago

    More like Minionmind.

drdec 2 days ago

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

sarmadgulzar 2 days ago

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

celticninja 2 days ago

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

kcaseg 2 days ago

Bit masking : the game

sidcool 2 days ago

It should be solvable in no more than 2 moves.

  • UnreachableCode 2 days ago

    Don’t you mean 10 moves?

    • amanverasia 2 days ago

      The only reason I logged into my account is to give you an upvote!

b0a04gl a day ago

bitmask bruteforce took 5 ops max.solving fizzbuzz with a GPU.

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 2 days ago

      Huh, surprisingly difficult to get. Took me 8 or so attempts.

alloysmila 2 days ago

only two attempts are ever needed :-(

HenryBemis 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days ago

    That didn't get it?

    No, sadly.

nicwolff 2 days ago

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

odo1242 2 days ago

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

  • rossant 2 days ago

    How lucky of you. You had one chance out of 100000.