[HN Gopher] Resurrecting the old Wordle for procrastinators
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Resurrecting the old Wordle for procrastinators
Author : ingve
Score : 52 points
Date : 2022-02-13 19:30 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (leancrew.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (leancrew.com)
| mabbo wrote:
| I don't know what has changed about the game, but running it in
| my phone (Pixel 4, Firefox mobile) has become near impossible.
|
| Every other action freezes the entire page while some event gets
| processed. And by event I mean like "clicked the 'L' button", the
| most basic actions in the game.
|
| I guess I'll just stick with the alternatives from now on.
| not2b wrote:
| Note that as of now there is no paywall, going to the old URL
| forwards to the new URL and game history is kept (my streak is 38
| days now), and the small number of removed words doesn't affect
| gameplay. Perhaps it makes sense for addicts to grab the original
| version just in case the NYT eventually restricts access, but so
| far they haven't.
| tibbar wrote:
| The new Wordle has a shorter word list (down from about 12k to
| about 10k valid guess words).
|
| EDIT: both lists are about the same length (12k); a small number
| of words were removed.
| phreack wrote:
| Do you know of any rehosts of the old Wordle code?
| JonathanBuchh wrote:
| I made a copy the day The New York Times bought Wordle:
| https://buchh.fun/wordle
|
| Thanks to Josh for making Wordle with a free license.
| shadowfacts wrote:
| It is shorter, but only by 19 removed words and 6 removed
| answers. Compare for yourself:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/main.bd4cb59c.js
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220210034340id_/https://www.po...
| tibbar wrote:
| Oh, hmm. Perhaps the list has been changed multiple times? It
| was originally 12972 words (see
| https://www.poirrier.ca/notes/wordle-optimal/) and was 10638
| words as of yesterday. Anyway, some of the words that have
| been removed are slurs/profanity.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| I believe you're mixing it up. There are two arrays of
| words in the source code. One that contains all the
| solutions in order, and one that contains all the possible
| words without repeating any words in the solutions list
|
| So the 10638 words are the set of all possible guesses
| minus the set of all the solutions.
| tibbar wrote:
| Oh... I think you're right. Thanks.
| [deleted]
| jessikat wrote:
| It allowed cunts as a guess today :p
| culi wrote:
| There's a bit of confusion here because there's actually 2
| word lists. There's a list of ~2,300 words that are ACTUAL
| words that will some day be the word of the day and there's a
| list of 12k POSSIBLE words you can enter in
|
| I think OP is correct about them removing ~2k of the possible
| words
| culi wrote:
| I think you're technically correct originally. They only
| removed less than two dozen from the ACTUAL word list but they
| did in fact remove ~2k from the list of possible words you can
| enter in (which is the list most players interact with)
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Why?
| dspillett wrote:
| We can only guess, but perhaps they've applied some sort of
| commonality filter and dropped words that are rarely used? Or
| perhaps they've simply moved more words from the guess list
| into the challenge list? (the challenge list was produced
| from what words one person immediately recognised, after all)
|
| Or, most likely IMO, they were not 100% certain they could
| legally use the existing word list (now, or for what they
| plan for the future) or were certain they couldn't without
| paying for some sort of license, so they produced a new list
| from scratch from a source they have licensed for their other
| word games.
| bee_rider wrote:
| There are two lists: guesses you are allowed to make, and
| possible solutions from the puzzle. From the solutions list
| they removed some words that had different British and
| American spellings, as well as some words with negative
| associations, like "slave."
|
| From the possible guesses list, the words removed appeared to
| mostly be quite offensive slurs.
| avalys wrote:
| What's an example of a word that was removed? Any pattern
| there?
| sbierwagen wrote:
| https://boingboing.net/2022/02/11/pussy-pupal-and-agora-
| amon... "Lynch", "slave", a series of racial slurs, etc.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| The day they moved to the NYT they removed words that could
| refer to the female anatomy (like "pussy"), as well as words
| referring to certain unpleasant concepts (e.g. slavery). They
| retained words referring to male genitalia (like "boner").
| Make of that what you will.
| Buldak wrote:
| I suppose they're both vulgar, but one difference is that
| "pussy" has a derogatory use that "boner" doesn't have.
| askvictor wrote:
| They removed them from the allowed guesses list, or the
| possible answers list? I might be convinced about removing
| them from the possible answers, but the allowed guesses
| should be basically all possible English 5-letter words.
| Even if they make some argument about kids typing rude
| words in a classroom activity, well, kids are going to do
| that anyway...
| bee_rider wrote:
| The game has two lists -- one list that includes 'valid
| guesses' (things you can enter), and one that is a list of
| things that could actually end up as the solution.
|
| From the possible solutions list, they removed words that
| have negative associations -- stuff like "slave."
|
| From the guesses list, they mostly removed things like slurs.
| b3morales wrote:
| What's the game's reason for having two lists instead of
| just one?
| function_seven wrote:
| A lot of valid 5-letter words are so obscure as to make
| the game not fun when you inevitably lose.
|
| If the answer to a day's Wordle was QIBLA or AALII or
| RAHUI, I'd probably stop playing.
|
| Here's the full list of valid guesses. There are a lot of
| words here that most people don't know.
|
| https://gist.github.com/cfreshman/cdcdf777450c5b5301e4390
| 61d...
| bee_rider wrote:
| At least in the first version of the game, the
| 'solutions' list was actually just a sequential list of
| what the answer would be for each given day. So, calling
| them 'possible solutions' on my part was actually a
| little misleading (sorry), there's no probability going
| on or anything like that. Not sure if NYT changed it.
|
| The value is that we all get the same answer, so which
| makes it more fun to compare our results (this does mean
| that you can just cheat and look up the answer, and it
| might have been possible to obscure the list somehow, but
| probably getting into an escalating war with cheaters was
| not a priority for such a simple little free game).
| ghaff wrote:
| I assume the logic is that they shouldn't have "unusual"
| words as answers but shouldn't gatekeep too much about
| what words you enter as that would be frustrating.
| b3morales wrote:
| This is interesting info, but...what paywall? The old URL
| https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/ still goes directly to
| the puzzle (redirecting to nytimes.com).
| ihuman wrote:
| The article is talking about "the inevitable New York Times
| paywall", not one right now
| woolly wrote:
| The article also mentions this:
|
| > February 10 was the last day Wordle was still available at
| its old site.
|
| Which doesn't appear to be the case, it is still accessible
| at the powerlanguage address.
| davidbanham wrote:
| The future appears to be unevenly distributed. Some get
| redirected some don't.
| jka wrote:
| That URL currently redirects to the NYT version of the
| game, although it's possible that browsers may continue to
| cache and display a previously-requested version of the
| page contents (avoiding a redirect, at least while the
| cache remains valid).
| stolen_biscuit wrote:
| That's what I've got on my phone, hasn't redirected to
| new york times and still running the version on
| powerlanguage
| [deleted]
| ihuman wrote:
| No it isn't. The powerlanguage address [1] redirects to the
| New York Times's version [2].
|
| [1] https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html
| dspillett wrote:
| Picking at nits I know, but it is available _via_ that
| site, not _at_ it.
|
| And via a cookie wall. From a quick scan of NYT's policy I
| got the impression clicking "reject" might only reject
| their direct tracking not that of 3rd parties, though I
| didn't have time to look in detail first time I was
| redirected, and I've not yet found the right combination of
| free time and inclination to nip back since, so I could
| have come to the wrong conclusion there.
| b3morales wrote:
| So where does the "procrastination" come in?
| _moof wrote:
| Not saving the original HTML and JavaScript before the
| redirect was established.
| afavour wrote:
| I keep seeing that but I'd be amazed if NYT paywalled it.
| They'll just add derivative versions and stuff like that for
| subscribers. Much like how their daily mini crossword is free
| to all.
| _moof wrote:
| When the NYT announced the purchase, they said Wordle would
| "initially" remain free to play.
|
| If I told you that tonight I will "initially" be watching
| Evil Dead II, you're going to have some questions about
| what I'm doing afterward.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/business/media/new-
| york-t...
| keithnz wrote:
| I'd be amazed as well, they're far better off using it to
| promote themselves and try to bait you to try/look at other
| things. Paywalling it would just remove most of those daily
| users they just bought. Maybe when it dies off, then they
| will do that, but quite likely most people will use one of
| the many clones, especially the apps. The fad will die off
| really quick I'm thinking. To me it doesn't have the
| lasting power of things like sudoku.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The redirect target has some obnoxious stuff like a cookie
| banner as well as outright malware like Google Tag Manager
| (which will no doubt load further malware if it is allowed to
| load itself).
| progbits wrote:
| Well it already has a modal cookie popup so the experience has
| degraded right away. Sure, it is not _that bad_, but the trend
| is clear.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I recently made a cli version of Wordle. So I can play
| indefinitely: https://github.com/jakesco/wordle-hs
| askvictor wrote:
| Will the answers from the new and old versions start diverging at
| some point? i.e. will the share link need to specify which
| version your pictographs are referring to (though I'd imagine NYT
| would add some branding/advertising to their share link before
| link)
| TeaVMFan wrote:
| Easier still, try one of the alternatives like Wordii:
|
| https://frequal.com/wordii
|
| Bonus features: * Streak stats to share * Try new words faster
| culi wrote:
| SHREK IS NOT IN THE DICTIONARY
| oliwary wrote:
| I like this one! Clean and minimalist. Did you make it?
|
| Shameless self-plug, but if anyone is interested in
| alternatives with an added challenge, I made
| https://squareword.org where you guess words to uncover a word
| square of 5x5 letters. Feedback has been positive and looks
| like user numbers are picking up, doubling about once per week
| so far.
| TeaVMFan wrote:
| Yes, this is a ground-up implementation using TeaVM and the
| Flavour toolkit.
|
| TeaVM: https://teavm.org/
|
| Flavour: https://teavm.org/docs/flavour/templates.html
| function_seven wrote:
| So it just told me that SPANKS, BALLS, and TEAMS are all not in
| the dictionary. What are the rules for this one?
| ufo wrote:
| The hard part of of the article is getting the history file
| from Local Storage. If you don't care about that then it's much
| easier.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| there are many many words missing from its guess dictionary
|
| laser lakes
|
| to name a couple
| culi wrote:
| Here's an amazing list of other wordles:
|
| https://rwmpelstilzchen.gitlab.io/wordles/
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(page generated 2022-02-13 23:01 UTC)