[HN Gopher] Show HN: A mastermind-like version of Wordle
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Show HN: A mastermind-like version of Wordle
Wordle reminded me of Mastermind, a game I played as kid, so just
for fun I made a version of the game that plays a lot more like
Mastermind. I think this version is way more challenging :)
Author : prvnsmpth
Score : 31 points
Date : 2022-02-11 13:19 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (playhurdle.vercel.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (playhurdle.vercel.app)
| foolinaround wrote:
| each game should have an id that can be retrieved, so a link can
| be shared for that particular word...
| smallerfish wrote:
| Very nice. I agree with keeping track of which letters were
| guessed, maybe giving users the ability to set flags on them to
| keep track of their deductions in place of auto-eliminating them.
|
| My first real program (age 8) was an implementation of mastermind
| written in gwbasic. IIRC it worked surprisingly well.
|
| Request - cursor keys, overtyping, delete, etc should work
| better. Right now there are a few glitches in the cells.
| sc__ wrote:
| Fun and challenging! Looking forward to tomorrow's word.
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| Thanks! I hope you got today's word! I was able to guess it
| within 8 tries the last few times, but I failed today.
| altairprime wrote:
| One tech note: please consider disabling autocorrect in the
| letter input fields, as I was getting popups whenever I entered
| an i.
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| Ah, yes I should have done that to begin with. Thanks!
| lupire wrote:
| Take 2 or 3 presses for Enter to submit on Firefox on Android.
| scubbo wrote:
| My two favourite starting words (SOARE and CLINT[0]) are tagged
| as invalid here, whereas they're valid in the original game.
| Literally unplayable /s
|
| (Seriously - cool idea, nice execution!)
|
| [0] https://blog.scubbo.org/posts/cheating-at-word-games-part-2/
| sib301 wrote:
| Where can we find it? :)
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| The title of the post is also the link, just like any other HN
| post! This is the link: https://playhurdle.vercel.app/
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I always understood URL and text to be mutually exclusive--I
| believe this is the first item I've ever seen that has both.
| Consequently, starting from the discussion page, when I saw
| the text I initially overlooked the fact that there was a URL
| too.
|
| (And I just found my second. OK, so this is a thing now, is
| it? I rather liked how it was until a few months ago where
| you could submit a link, or plain text with no links. Now
| _some_ text submissions get links linkified, and now
| apparently you can have both text and URL, even if the
| submission page's text still suggests they're mutually
| exclusive.)
| chromaton wrote:
| It doesn't recognize SOARE or UNLIT, 2 of my favorite Wordle
| guesses.
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| Hmm, I took the words from `/usr/share/dict/words` on Ubuntu,
| maybe I need a more comprehensive dictionary.
| nsilvestri wrote:
| Extract the valid guess and potential answer lists from
| Wordle itself.
| tuukkah wrote:
| See here: http://wordlist.aspell.net/12dicts-
| readme/#whichlist
| marcofatica wrote:
| Can't backspace on Android chrome. To replace a letter I have to
| long press to highlight then hit my new letter
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| Oops, didn't try it on Android, thanks for pointing it out.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Don't know why but it takes 2 backspace to erase a letter on
| Android Firefox.
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| Well, you can blame my bad programming for that :)
|
| When you press backspace, the focus shifts to the previous
| cell, deleting the contents of the current cell. When you've
| entered < 5 characters in the current row, the focus is on the
| next empty cell. So the first backspace only takes you back to
| the previous cell, and the second backspace clears the last
| entered character.
| IneffablePigeon wrote:
| Not sure how you make this more obvious, perhaps I'm just slow
| today, but I failed because I didn't twig that when I got a
| letter in the right place it would make the right hand number go
| _down_ as well as incrementing the left number. I.e. I thought
| the right number was the total correct letters rather than just
| the count of letters that were correct _and_ in the wrong place.
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| Ah, yes, I think the instructions should be a bit clearer about
| that.
| foolinaround wrote:
| An easy mode could provide a querty keyboard that one can
| eliminate letters.
| vehemenz wrote:
| This is way more fun.
|
| Wordle is cool, but short of purposely making bad guesses I'm not
| sure how anyone could lose at it.
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| Yeah, this was partly inspired by how easy it is to solve
| Wordle, 4/6 is doable in most cases. That said, I think most
| people play Wordle with the objective of getting a 3/6.
| lucasmullens wrote:
| I think Wordle is in part about how fast you can solve it, not
| just if you can.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Which is fair, but then it becomes more of a luck-based game
| because the luckiest first guesses will always yield the
| fastest 2/6 or 3/6 results. I play in an office of 60+ and
| first guess determines the winner most of the time.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Definitely more challenging but it needs some nice to haves like
| showing which letters haven't been guessed or that couldn't
| possibly matter (a zero, zero row). Also, I don't like having to
| press enter. But overall fun.
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| Yeah, I think a keyboard that shows used letters just like
| Wordle does would be a nice addition. Thanks!
| neogodless wrote:
| Of course the trick there is... does the keyboard show
| letters as eliminated? That's the deduction you have to do in
| mastermind.
|
| And if the keyboard highlighted "right place" letters for the
| most recent guess it wouldn't be mastermind.
|
| So really it would just show letters you have or have not yet
| guessed, but without any indication on if they are right, or
| in the right place.
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| That's right, wouldn't want to make it _too_ easy!
| aldanor wrote:
| 1. Might be also nice to handle 0-0 case separately and grey
| out all those letters both in the guesses on the board and
| perhaps in a separate keyboard as well.
|
| 2. Can go one step further, e.g. if a guess has X-0 and all
| there's only X cells that are not greyed out (see above),
| mark them as green in all correct guesses on board.
|
| 3. After these two steps, step 1 can be applied again since
| there will be more such cases where it can be applied.
|
| You might argue that it steals from the game, but I'd
| disagree - it leaves the high level strategy to the player
| while saving them from dealing with the boilerplate. A very
| good example of that is Good Sudoku game (app), where they've
| tried to innovate on classic sudoku interface for similar
| purposes - I highly recommend checking it out since it's
| somewhat close to this game in some regards.
| greatjack613 wrote:
| This is a cool concept especially now that the old one got
| susbsumed by the NYT.
|
| I am currently using https://wordlle.app, but it still contains
| Google Analytics.
|
| Does anyone here know of a clone that has absolutely zero
| tracking?
| theschmed wrote:
| When I lose it doesn't seem to tell me what the correct answer
| was, is that correct?
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| That's right, I wasn't sure whether the answer should be
| revealed or not, so I left it out. Do you think the answer
| should be revealed, or should the player be given more tries?
| mikeymz wrote:
| Reveal please
| ss48 wrote:
| How about two buttons, one to show answer and one to retry?
| gsoto wrote:
| I would say something like "keep guessing" instead of
| "retry" but good suggestion.
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| Yeah I think that makes sense, will add that as an option
| for the player to choose.
| toss1 wrote:
| Cool game!
|
| My first thought is a button for [Add Extra Try] to add one
| row, and another for [I Give Up - Tell Me]
|
| I also second the thought on not using red as the colors for
| the correct letters. Perhaps white-on-green for the in-
| correct-position count and white or blue-on-light-gray for
| the -present-out-of-place count?
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| Yeah I think that's the way to go, will leave it up to the
| player to decide. Will also change the colors to match the
| green/amber color coding, thanks!
| neogodless wrote:
| I thought the colors were a nice nod to Mastermind.
|
| So perhaps a Mastermind theme and a Wordle them?
|
| :) If it's worth the effort!
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| Yeah I guess so! It isn't too much work :)
| foolinaround wrote:
| the easy/hard mode should increase the number of tries a
| person can make.
|
| also, would be nice to keep track of time taken in secs - as
| I find myself coming back to it between other tasks.
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| Agreed, tracking time is an interesting idea!
| bradhensen wrote:
| What's with Wordle like games popping out here on HN
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| You must have not been around during the floppening (a term I
| coined for the release of Floppy Bird to the world), when
| Floppy Bird clones abounded.
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| It's the flavor of the month, for better or for worse :)
| onion2k wrote:
| They're straightforward to code, fun to play, and _someone just
| sold one for a million bucks._
| not2b wrote:
| Got it in four, thanks to use of grep with the "enable1" word
| list and a bit of luck. Nicely done.
| gsoto wrote:
| Very cool. And way more challenging.
|
| A way to make this a bit easier would be allowing a nonexistent
| word once per game or something like that.
|
| > the red tile indicates the number of correct characters in the
| correct position
|
| I suggest using another color for that, as red is associated with
| error most of the time. Why not using the green/yellow for the
| numbers too?
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| Well, I chose red and white because those were the colors used
| to score in Mastermind :) But yeah, I suppose green/amber are
| better, and consistent with the color coding of the characters
| in the grid.
|
| > allowing a nonexistent word once per game
|
| That's a good suggestion, I guess I can introduce easy/hard
| modes and implement this in the easy mode. Thanks!
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(page generated 2022-02-11 23:02 UTC)