[HN Gopher] Worldle
___________________________________________________________________
Worldle
Author : infiniteseries
Score : 820 points
Date : 2022-02-17 00:29 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (worldle.teuteuf.fr)
(TXT) w3m dump (worldle.teuteuf.fr)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| What happens if you guess wrong? I didnt get the pleasure.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I will be much better at this than I am at Wordle.
| e-clinton wrote:
| I like this but waiting a day for a new puzzle means I'll never
| play it again
| aasasd wrote:
| Just get a geography deck for Anki instead.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Same feeling here for all the wordle clones I have seen on HN.
| Only the OG wordle can afford to do that.
| digbybk wrote:
| I've been playing semantle.novalis.org daily. It's hard
| enough that I don't want to start again when I'm done and I
| like that everyone is playing the same game with me. The
| problem with this is that it's too easy to allow infinite
| guesses but if you don't get it in 5 you want to start again
| right away.
| mikewarot wrote:
| It's a design feature, meant to enhance virality.
|
| It also stops me from bingeing, which is a big plus.
| JonathanBuchh wrote:
| What are good resources for learning geography?
| ghastmaster wrote:
| https://online.seterra.com/en
| mbg721 wrote:
| Good old-fashioned memorization using blank maps (Googling
| "blank map [continent]" will give you plenty) will get you
| farther than you might expect. Having the name and place
| anchored in your head makes offhand news stories about those
| places stick much more easily.
| ghaff wrote:
| I suspect even spending an hour or two of study with Google
| Maps would help a lot with this game (and with where
| countries are located in general).
| swilliamsio wrote:
| Sporcle has a trove of geography quizzes. I'm quite proud of
| myself for acing the all countries quiz.
|
| https://www.sporcle.com/games/category/geography?sortBy=allt...
|
| Here is a quiz that replicates Worldle:
|
| https://www.sporcle.com/games/Ian6320/countries-by-shape---w...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| just talked about a bit earlier
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30361677
|
| Made a month or more ago, but blew up about a week ago
| billyhoffman wrote:
| Got it in 4!
| 23matt wrote:
| You can see the result if you drag the map to your browsers
| address bar ("...images/countries/COUNTRY_CODE/vector.svg").
|
| Edit: Removing solution and replacing it with COUNTRY_CODE.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| Is it really necessary to spoil the solution for others?
| 23matt wrote:
| You are right. I removed it.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| Thanks!
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Awesome. It might get boring after 194 days though.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| What happens after 194 days?
| Galanwe wrote:
| There's that much different countries.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| If you can remember 194 shapes over the span of 194 days
| then hats off to you :).
| bombcar wrote:
| You run out of countries.
| Ftuuky wrote:
| First try :)
|
| #Worldle #27 1/6
|
| https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
| ask_b123 wrote:
| Same #Worldle #26 1/6
|
| You can retry on incognito mode if you want to see how it works
| though.
| verisimi wrote:
| This is a fascist game that's all about indoctrinating us into
| accepting the artificial idea of nation states! :)
| amanzi wrote:
| I don't understand how this works? It had a picture of _____, and
| the correct answer was ______. Is it just guessing the country
| name based on the shape?
|
| edit - hid my answer in case it wasn't as obvious to others.
| yardstick wrote:
| Todays question was super easy for a lot of people. Past
| countries have been things like Turks & Cacos, Liberia,
| Guatemala. Those I got close to and then the last guess or two
| I was scanning around google maps.
|
| Yeah it's not as fun as Wordle, kinda interesting for a few
| plays though.
| rplnt wrote:
| I wonder if this was posted every day and only got upvoted
| when a country that is definitely in the top 5 easiest and
| virtually everyone will get it in one or two tries was on
| offer.
|
| I wish the rotation would be on by default (the distances are
| enough of a hint), or at least work if I turn it on.
| skrebbel wrote:
| This happened exactly. It had 5 upvotes yesterday
| (Liberia).
| ghaff wrote:
| My world geography is pretty good but there are still a lot
| of small countries that I'm going to be vague on their
| shapes, exact locations, and even current names.
| amanzi wrote:
| Yep, that's why I was confused - seemed too easy to be fun.
| But I tried again today and it was much more difficult.
| mcv wrote:
| Guatemala was surprisingly hard for me. I discovered I really
| have no idea what the countries in Central America actually
| look like. I got it by naming literally every single Central
| American country think of, and then thinking really hard
| which one I missed. Guatemala has an interesting border I
| won't easily forget anymore.
|
| On the other hand, I got Nepal in one, which I'm unreasonably
| proud of.
| wallacoloo wrote:
| oh, shoot. i assumed i was trying to guess an island nation
| since it wasn't rendered with any surroundings. but it renders
| all states this way -- just the border, as if it had no
| neighbors?
| SamBam wrote:
| That's right, and all scaled the same too, so you have no
| idea of the size.
| Galanwe wrote:
| > s it just guessing the country name based on the shape
|
| Yes, and you get hints on distance and direction when wrong.
| numlock86 wrote:
| How can you get it wrong, though? You are basically presented
| the solution. It's like if Wordle would show you the picture
| of a tiger and asks for the word "TIGER". And if you don't
| recognize a country by it's borders and just take a wild
| guess, something like "you are 5000km off!" probably won't
| help you much anyway, which is apparently what you are
| getting shown on a wrong guess according to comments here.
| xigoi wrote:
| On a wrong guess, it tells you the distance _and_ the
| direction.
| Galanwe wrote:
| Not everyone knows the exact shape of every country.
| afterburner wrote:
| The real problem is there's only 195 countries.
| Moru wrote:
| And some of them have VERY distinct shapes or locations.
| TuringTest wrote:
| In that case, it will be a good game for at least 195
| days
| afterburner wrote:
| No, the problem is much worse than that. Wordle has you
| drawing from a pool of 12000 possible 5-letter words to
| guess from a pool of 2500 answers.
|
| Compare this to drawing from 195 countries to guess 195
| countries.
| ghaff wrote:
| There are a ton of countries and territories in places like
| Africa and the Pacific Ocean that many/most people don't
| know what they look like and have, at best, a vague notion
| of their location and may not even recall their name
| unaided.
| pkdpic wrote:
| Well this is just fantastic. Appropriately humbling. I'm dumb
| though I need more clues.
| ihndan wrote:
| I guess there should be a wordle for each subject, like Nerdle
| for Math, worldle for Geography. And here is a wordle for
| History: https://peotik.com/otd/
| pishpash wrote:
| It's just turning into 20 questions, but with more bits per
| guess.
| gregschlom wrote:
| The next logical step would be to do a meta-wordle to guess the
| wordle app.
| stavros wrote:
| It's a bit frustrating that it changes daily, the first country
| was too easy so I missed out on all the mechanics and now I have
| to wait until tomorrow to try again.
| thornjm wrote:
| You could open the link in a new private browsing window and
| enter an incorrect guess.
| stavros wrote:
| Ah, I didn't think of incognito, thanks!
| rabuse wrote:
| All you have to do is clear the local storage values.
| qalmakka wrote:
| I discovered this a few days ago, but being the huge geography
| nerd I am I've never done worse than one attempt...
| ackyshake wrote:
| Did you give hiding the map a shot? Makes it a little more
| challenging.
| wolframhempel wrote:
| Not to spoil the fun, but the solution is in the image filename
| of the map
| asutekku wrote:
| You could've just said the answer is in the filename without
| spoiling the answer in your comment.
| sarreph wrote:
| Couldn't you have said that without spoiling the actual country
| name?
| wolframhempel wrote:
| sorry - you're both right. I've removed it. (didn't realize
| that everyone gets the same country)
| mlatu wrote:
| instead of the boxes they should use a progress bar to visualize
| distance between guess and solution... otherwise fun i guess
| [deleted]
| yuy910616 wrote:
| I wonder how NYT feels about this.
| julienreszka wrote:
| So is this only one country per day? huh, how frustrating
| kej wrote:
| Globle is another daily geography game: https://globle-game.com/
| Galanwe wrote:
| It seems very buggy.
|
| - lots of country guesses raise an error saying it doesn't
| exist. Such as "brasil".
|
| - if you zoom on the map, there are flashings of the underlying
| map layer with country names...
|
| - I got to find the exact match of "French Guiana (France)"...
| ricardo81 wrote:
| >french guiana
|
| Bit problematic, think an auto complete might make life
| easier for guessing
| jefftk wrote:
| _> lots of country guesses raise an error saying it doesn 't
| exist. Such as "brasil"_
|
| In English it's spelled with a "z", and they're probably
| using an English dictionary?
| phpisatrash wrote:
| Really impressive. This is something i would play every day. I
| love Geography and this is amazing for discovering and learning
| about new places. Great work!
| chmod600 wrote:
| Is it considered cheating to look at a map? Seems to easy if so.
| hornej wrote:
| Trying to pronounce this is the hardest thing I've ever done
| vikingerik wrote:
| You could say "worldly". It doesn't have to rhyme with the
| other game Wordle.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I have family members who pronounce it wordly, so there it
| even rhymes!
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| Well look at Mr Privilege over here, showing off!
|
| (j/k)
| CephalopodMD wrote:
| Lmao. Got it in one guess.
|
| #Worldle #26 1/6
|
| https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
| [deleted]
| ergocoder wrote:
| Is this up to date? I can't input ukraine
| SamBam wrote:
| Huh? Sure you can.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Might have updated it preemptively.
| Galanwe wrote:
| Is there a way to play previous day games? It's a bit sad when
| you just discover the game and can't try it out on 2/3 games.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Like all of these daily games, you can change your system date
| to get a new round.
| [deleted]
| Steko wrote:
| If it's coded like wordle you can just change system date and
| do the other puzzles.
| yhoneycomb wrote:
| Pretty fun! Seems kind of weird to say you're 0km away tho. Maybe
| put a bullseye emoji instead?
| cheeaun wrote:
| Been playing this for the past few days.
|
| Today's (17 Feb) is easy for me. But gosh, last few days were
| really tough, mostly countries that I'm not aware of or don't
| hear a lot.
| franky47 wrote:
| For all of you who want to play more, the Wayback Machine has you
| covered:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/
| jrgd wrote:
| Love at first sight.
| visarga wrote:
| Some people are banning "*dle" from their feeds. I propose
| Worldel as an alternative name.
| oblio wrote:
| That's like some people ignoring you on purpose and you going:
| "talk to meeeeeee!!!!".
| ArcMex wrote:
| I typed in Taiwan and I have thoughts. Good thoughts.
| tantalor wrote:
| Taiwan is the name of an island. The country name is Republic
| of China.
| infiniteseries wrote:
| I didn't make this, just found it interesting as a geography
| nerd. I'm not sure if the author is on HN or not
| soheilpro wrote:
| This guy has made it:
| https://twitter.com/fintanytwalsh/status/1492466778370453510
| kiru_io wrote:
| That's not correct, this guy made it:
| https://twitter.com/teuteuf
| throwaway889900 wrote:
| Anyone else getting an SSL error from the page?
| deisner wrote:
| When do you get a yellow square? I couldn't find this documented
| anywhere, so I took a look at the code.
|
| Here's what I found: For each guess, Worldle calculates a
| proximity score from 0 to 100 -- higher is better. Each row is
| basically a quantized proximity score meter, from 0 to 100 in
| increments of 20. If you get at least half-way to the next
| increment of 20 (i.e. to the next green square), you get a yellow
| square, too.
|
| Example: If your proximity score for a guess is 63, you'll get 3
| green squares and two blank (white or black) squares, i.e. GGGBB.
| If your score is 71, you'll get three green squares, and since 71
| is at least half-way to 80 (i.e. >= 70), you'll also get a yellow
| square, so GGGYB.
|
| The proximity score is round(100*(MAX_DISTANCE_ON_EARTH -
| d)/MAX_DISTANCE_ON_EARTH). Though that max distance is defined to
| be 20,000,000.
|
| This is the important part:
| https://github.com/teuteuf/worldle/blob/67db30bdf79c0965c19a...
| skykooler wrote:
| I'm not sure how the yellow square rendering is implemented,
| but for me it just shows a empty Unicode character for it
| (Firefox on MacOS) - black squares render properly though.
| umanwizard wrote:
| 20 million meters is indeed about the maximum distance between
| any two points on Earth.
| mcv wrote:
| Along the surface. Otherwise it's about 12 million meters.
| umanwizard wrote:
| True! I assumed they were using the distance on the surface
| here, not the path tunneling through the interior.
| [deleted]
| JoachimS wrote:
| It also depends on the direction.
|
| The earth is bulging at the equator (or getting flatened
| pole to pole) due to rotation.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_bulge
| blendergeek wrote:
| > Though that max distance is defined to be 20,000,000.
|
| This is _almost_ true (in real life). The meter was originally
| defined as 1 /10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to
| the north pole. Given that the earth is a fairly "nice" sphere,
| the maximum distance between any two points on earth is very
| close to 20,000,000 meters.
| unkulunkulu wrote:
| TIL, so the equator length is 40k km by definition? So cool!
| TobTobXX wrote:
| 40k km = 40Mm
| mcv wrote:
| Sadly nobody ever used that. We could also use Pm for
| interstellar distances.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Almost but no. Today all the SI base units are defined in
| terms of a universal constant, so that if you understood
| how SI works you can do all the same metrication work from
| a distant galaxy, you don't need to be here on Earth. The
| metre is defined by the constant c, the "speed of light"
|
| But because of this original definition the equator will
| work out to _about_ 40000 km.
| Someone wrote:
| It also never was _by definition_. The meter was
| originally defined as
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metre) "one
| ten-millionth of the shortest distance from the North
| Pole to the equator passing through Paris, assuming an
| Earth's flattening of 1/334"
|
| You have to add the fact that earth is almost spherical
| to go, from there, to "the length of the equator is about
| 40 million meters".
|
| Reading that Wikipedia page, I think it already was known
| when the meter was defined that the polar diameter of the
| Earth is smaller than its equatorial diameter.
| nonfamous wrote:
| "The Mapmakers Wife" is an interesting book that tells
| the story of how explorers measured arcs of latitude and
| longitude around the world to figure all this out. The
| audiobook version is good too.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, the speed of light was measured in traditional
| meters and then new meters were redefined based on the
| existing speed of light. So the difference from 40000km
| attributable to redefinition would be on the order of
| centimeters or smaller; any deviation could only arise
| from our inability to measure the speed of light
| precisely, and we can be quite precise.
|
| There's some difference (~7km, if we believe wikipedia)
| attributable to the original measurement of Earth's
| circumference being off, and much much more difference
| (~67km, ten times as much) attributable to the fact that
| the earth is slightly oblate. (In other words, meters
| were defined by reference to the polar circumference, but
| the equatorial circumference is larger than the polar
| circumference is.)
| yread wrote:
| and one minute of longitude on the equator is 1/360/60
| =1/21600th of it or around 1.855km or approximately 1nm.
| This decreases with cos of your latitude.
|
| One minute of latitude is always 1nm
| saimiam wrote:
| (for those mentally converting nm to nano meter and
| scratching your head) I _think_ nm here means nautical
| mile which makes more sense in context than nanometer.
| vikingerik wrote:
| The _meridian_ is 40,000 km, by original definition. Trace
| any great circle through both poles (any pair of antipodal
| meridians, such as 0deg and 180deg) and that is 40k km.
|
| The equator is more than that because of the oblateness of
| the spheroid.
|
| And nowadays, the meter is defined in terms of natural
| units (time and the speed of light) in a way to be
| compatible with the original definition by the meridian.
| kizer wrote:
| I want a new Worldle!!!
| kizer wrote:
| Seriously. How do you get a fresh one?
| ghaff wrote:
| You wait a day. (Although there are various workarounds.)
| kizer wrote:
| Thanks. I never played the original.
| mooreds wrote:
| This was great! Thanks for putting this together.
| drivers99 wrote:
| Is it cheating to look at a map? I got a very nearby country so I
| looked to see what was around it which shows the shape quite
| clearly. I guess as an educational tool, it's still very good
| that way. I now know how those countries are geographically
| related, in an area I don't know very well.
| labster wrote:
| Like the Wordle, the only person who determines if it's
| cheating is you. How you enjoy it is all up to you. There are
| settings to rotate or hide the map here, so we're not all
| playing the same game anyway.
| rplnt wrote:
| > the only person who determines if it's cheating is you
|
| This is something that is unequivocally true, yet I get
| mildly irritated/frustrated (is there a word for combination
| of these two?) when people use google or something to "get
| words".
|
| > There are settings to rotate or hide the map here, so we're
| not all playing the same game anyway.
|
| Wordle has hard mode too. But in this case you see the map
| before given this option. And at least the rotation doesn't
| work for me.
| labster wrote:
| I understand that feeling. The social aspect of the Wordle
| - sharing grids -- creates an expectation of some social
| agreement on scores.
|
| But I doubt HN could agree on what is good sporting
| wordling. Some of us like to guess with no sources save our
| minds; some of us wrote code to generate optimal
| strategies. And like, it's super easy to just delete lines
| from the share button output, if you feel embarrassed. We
| all had fun with it differently, at different skill levels,
| which made it a special phenomenon.
|
| If you compare with friends, tell em what tools you use.
| They can say you cheat, or you're cheating yourself, but if
| you're having fun and being honest, you're playing it
| right.
|
| > yet I get mildly irritated/frustrated (is there a word
| for combination of these two?)
|
| VEXED
| jayprakashbhai wrote:
| throwaway6532 wrote:
| I can see my house from here.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| #Worldle #26 4/6
|
| https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| #Worldle #26 5/6
|
| https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
|
| Got 2 bordering countries then looked at map.
| rplnt wrote:
| Now these two comments explain some other. I got #27 which
| was probably the worst choice for this game. I can only think
| of two easier country outlines to pick.
| divbzero wrote:
| TIL: ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2
| cwkoss wrote:
| The arrows mean that the target is in that direction _from_ your
| guess (NOT from the target country). I interpreted at as meaning
| the opposite, which made things tricky
| layer8 wrote:
| On a sphere both interpretations are correct. ;)
| spiderice wrote:
| But.. that's not true. The US is one mile north of Mexico.
| That doesn't mean Mexico is one mile north of the US.
| macintux wrote:
| Yet if you head that direction and keep going straight,
| eventually you'll get to Mexico.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Play the game and you'll see how it doesn't work that way
| based on the information given.
| spiderice wrote:
| I didn't say otherwise. The game doesn't just give you an
| arrow. It also gives you a distance.
| wyldfire wrote:
| Maybe they should also show the conjugate direction and
| distance.
| anonu wrote:
| RTFM
| soperj wrote:
| What direction and how far away the country is.
| [deleted]
| notimetorelax wrote:
| Please put it in bold font on the main page that there's no way
| to get new puzzle and you need yo wait for a day. I was very
| confused while looking for the button to restart.
| noja wrote:
| That's one of the USPs of Wordle and its clones: one daily
| puzzle.
| 12ian34 wrote:
| I believe changing your system date should "work"...
| distances wrote:
| Yeah I don't get the point of this as is. At least the current
| country is nothing short of obvious, so everyone gets it right
| on first guess and then just waits a day?
| [deleted]
| Ansil849 wrote:
| I was extremely confused about the distance values in relation to
| the percentages until I read the help:
|
| > The distances displayed correspond to the distances between the
| selected and the target territory centers.
|
| > For instance, the computed distance between United States and
| Canada is around 2260km even if they have a common border.
|
| That's extremely deceptive and non-obvious unless you read
| through the documentation. One of the appeals of Wordle is that
| it is an extremely intuitive game which doesn't require rule
| reading.
| rplnt wrote:
| How is it deceptive? To me it's an extra tidbit of information
| that doesn't seem important. It's clearly linked with distance,
| so I know it's something to do with distance.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > How is it deceptive?
|
| When people talk about how far one country is from another,
| chances are extremely unlikely they are referring to how far
| their central points are from one another.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps they should have picked:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausdorff_distance
| maxiepoo wrote:
| Wouldn't that make countries like the USA and Canada
| extremely far apart because they are both large countries?
| The distance you would get is the distance from Hawaii to
| somewhere on the northeastern edge of
| Nunavut/Newfoundland/Labrador
| heftig wrote:
| Not quite, you'd get the maximum distance from the extreme
| end of one territory to the _nearest_ point of the other.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > Not quite, you'd get the maximum distance from the
| extreme end of one territory to the nearest point of the
| other.
|
| But which country do you pick the extreme edge of, and
| which country do you pick the nearest point of? For
| example, if measuring US<->Canada, do you pick the
| extreme end of Canada or the extreme end of the US?
| mcv wrote:
| Worldle also doesn't require rule reading. I've been playing it
| for a week and never read any documentation. It's quite
| intuitive if you're not interested in nitpicking exactly what
| the distance measurement means.
| ghaff wrote:
| It sort of does to the degree you need to know (for some
| words) how things work if a letter appears more than once.
| Aeolun wrote:
| If you get a 'country that's 2000 km north of the USA' and do
| not guess Canada (the 'only' country north of the US) then I
| don't know what to say.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| And you could presumably say the same thing about any other
| two countries, yes?
| WilTimSon wrote:
| To be fair, Wordle also doesn't require much external knowledge
| beyond a basic vocabulary. This is aimed at a more narrow crowd
| and is just a fun experiment.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| I think Wordle requires a pretty extensive vocabulary to be
| played successfully. Though you could say the same thing
| about Worldle: it doesn't require much external knowledge
| beyond basic geography.
| ghaff wrote:
| For Wordle, a decent vocabulary and also some intuition
| about letter frequency, the likelihood of letter
| combinations in various positions, etc. For this "basic
| geography" I guess but that would include knowing the names
| and approximate locations of some fairly obscure and not
| distinctive looking countries. (That said, if I cared
| enough to do so, I could probably bone up on my geography
| for a couple hours and I could probably do better.
| ramzyo wrote:
| Yeah, I agree that's pretty confusing. That being said I had to
| read the Wordle rules the first time I played. Had no idea what
| the differences were between colors and that a letter could be
| used multiple times in the same word.
| vincnetas wrote:
| they could have simply used distance between geometries like
| st_distance in postgres. curious about edge cases here where
| for example one coordinate is 178 longitude and another -178
| longitude. also does this game show whole countries which have
| territories over great distances like france denmark or norway
| function_seven wrote:
| So what is the percentage indicate separately from the
| distance?
|
| I think the "right" way to display the distance would be from
| the closest points in the guessed and target territories. So
| United States and Canada, sharing a border, would be "0 km",
| while Canada and Mexico would be whatever the shortest path
| from border to border would be (like 2,000km?)
|
| I have a feeling that's a bit more difficult than centers,
| though. But it wouldn't be a problem as far as outlying
| territories go; the image is of a contiguous landmass, not the
| entire country.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Interesting because, between easy-and-wrong and hard-but-
| perfect, there is the solution of subtracting the size of
| each country from their distance.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Assuming by "size" you mean something like average/longest
| distance from the center this is the worst possible answer
| because it's super non-intuitive and can create crazy
| results like negative answers.
| mypalmike wrote:
| > I have a feeling that's a bit more difficult than centers,
| though.
|
| This is quite an understatement.
| 3np wrote:
| Given it's a static dataset of countries, the distance of
| all country pairs could all be precomputed and loaded in
| memory, I guess -\\_(tsu)_/-
| mypalmike wrote:
| True. But to perform that precomputation, you have to
| find a database of country geometry outlines. And
| (manually?) filter out things like Hawaii and Guam from
| these. Then, assuming country geometry is given as lat
| lon polygons, it seems you then are computing either
| O(n^2 * m^2) distances where n is the number of countries
| and m is the average number of vertices per country. Or
| you might come up with some space partitioning algorithm
| on the vertices to reduce that to maybe O(n^2 * m
| log(m)). It's doable, but my comment was merely pointing
| out that it's much more complex than comparing country
| centers.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Oh, good point. Getting an SVG of the world and just
| brute forcing every country would be near instant.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Hmm. What issue might you encounter trying to solve this
| problem using an SVG?
| mcorning wrote:
| It's really a shame the developer didn't add this feature.
| One might be scared off by the large number of geometry files
| involved with this, but actually this is a great example of
| when hard coding can supersede dynamic/robust code. It would
| be better to simply store an object of all countries borders
| and the their relative direction to one another. I could see
| this being a slight issue with countries that share a border
| with another that is many directions of their border (Lesotho
| and South Africa, for example), but it would still be much
| less deceptive than saying "the USA is 2000km south of
| Canada."
| midasuni wrote:
| France would be fascinating
| midasuni wrote:
| (For context France has borders with Brazil for example,
| and is only a few miles from Canada and not far from
| Austrailia)
| polishdude20 wrote:
| But then you get Canada and you instantly know it's the USA
| next.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > But then you get Canada and you instantly know it's the
| USA next.
|
| So in your hypothetical scenario....this hypothetical
| player would know that the only country Canada has a land
| border with is the USA, but not know what the USA looks
| like so as to be able to solve this without first guessing
| Canada?
|
| This seems improbable to me. Chances are that if someone
| knows enough about a country that it's a 'single neighbor'
| country, or that it has a 'single neighbor' country, they
| will also know what the country looks like.
|
| For example, if someone instantly knows that if they typed
| in Haiti it must then be the Dominican Republic, chances
| are very high that they wouldn't have typed Haiti because
| they also know what the Dominican Republic looks like. Much
| like chances are high that if someone knows that Canada
| only borders the USA, they also wouldn't have typed Canada
| in the first place, but would have guessed USA right away.
| superasn wrote:
| I think the percentage could be relative size of countries
| instead. Still a hint and kinda intuitive.
| Aunche wrote:
| What is the center of the US anyways? Does it include Alaska
| and Guam?
| lemax wrote:
| Fun fact, Google Earth had its coordinates defaulted to an
| apartment complex in Lawrence, Kansas, apparently the
| childhood home of one of the engineers, but also roughly the
| center of the United States.
|
| https://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/dec/21/lawrence_pinpointe.
| ..
| mcv wrote:
| I thought it was a farm in Kansas. They frequently get
| visitors looking for people who's geo ip data said they
| lived there.
| code_runner wrote:
| Safe to assume middle of the lower 48
| chrisshroba wrote:
| That's not generalizable to every country though.
| kemiller wrote:
| Rule could be it's the center of the geography they're
| showing you. If they actually put Guam on the USA map
| then it's included. If not, it's not.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| What about France? Is it half way into Spain because its
| weighted towards French Guyana?
| sgjohnson wrote:
| What about Reunion? Then it should be roughly in the
| middle of Africe.
| seszett wrote:
| If you weight it by the actual size of territories rather
| than just the extreme boundaries then the center is
| indeed in Spain, because the overseas regions are still
| rather small in comparison to the European part of
| France.
|
| If you use only the extreme boundaries then it gets a lot
| more interesting and I would say that the center is
| closer to the center of the Earth than to its surface.
| kenneth wrote:
| Things probably change if you weigh by surface including
| the ocean EEZ, with French Polynesia being the most
| significant area of France at this point.
| [deleted]
| jeffbee wrote:
| Great question! Is it the center of a convex hull containing
| the extent of territories? Or would you weight it by
| population? Is it in two dimensions on the surface of the
| Earth, or in three dimensions?
|
| Consider the possible "center" of France. There's probably
| some village in France proper with a monument, but unless you
| eject Guiana and Reunion I think it must be in the Atlantic
| somewhere.
| eutectic wrote:
| The centroid, surely.
| aylons wrote:
| Territories (eg French Guiana) are specifically separated
| in Worldle, even being possible answers themselves.
|
| Also, this is a map game, so for me it's pretty intuitive
| that it is the center of the hull. Maybe with some error
| due to projection (not sure how they implemented the map),
| but should not be a problem for solving the puzzle.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Interesting, since my understanding of the matter is that
| the status of Guiana within France is as integral with
| that nation as Alaska is with the U.S.
| divbzero wrote:
| Yes it is indeed an integral part of France -- a full
| department as mentioned in a sibling comment.
|
| (This is all news to me. I somehow assumed that French
| Guiana and British Virgin Islands were independent
| countries.)
| idontwantthis wrote:
| I think French Guiana is not a territory, it's a full
| department in France. Equal to Hawaii in the US as far as
| I know, but I'm not 100% sure.
| soneil wrote:
| That's my understanding too. Something about Napoleon
| wanting to be egalitarian. Has the interesting side-
| effect that France is both the western-most and eastern-
| most country in the EU.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| About egalitarian Napoleon:
|
| > In 1801, Louverture issued a constitution for Saint-
| Domingue [now Haiti] that decreed he would be governor-
| for-life and called for black autonomy and a sovereign
| black state. In response, Napoleon Bonaparte dispatched a
| large expeditionary force of French soldiers and warships
| to the island, led by Bonaparte's brother-in-law Charles
| Leclerc, to restore French rule. They were under secret
| instructions to restore slavery, at least in the formerly
| Spanish-held part of the island.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution#Napoleon
| _in...
|
| As for French Guiana, it was actually an _extreme_ penal
| colony at that time (also, it was briefly held by
| Portugal). It became a department in 1946.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > Also, this is a map game, so for me it's pretty
| intuitive that it is the center of the hull.
|
| I don't follow. How does this being a map game make it
| intuitive that the distance outputs are based on hull
| centers? To me, closest border would seem be the most
| intuitive reading of the distance...this being a map
| game.
|
| If you poll 10 random people, I guarantee 10/10 would say
| that they consider borders to be the intuitive means of
| measurement of distance between two countries, not their
| (hull) centers.
| bspammer wrote:
| For the arrow hint to work at all, countries need to be a
| single point. I intuitively assumed the hull centre
| without really thinking about it.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > For the arrow hint to work at all, countries need to be
| a single point.
|
| First of all; no, not at all. The arrow hint can work if
| countries are considered a mass, not a point, it simply
| means that there can be times when there are any number
| of correct arrow designations.
|
| Second of all, even if countries are considered as single
| points for the arrow hint, that is not the issue being
| presently discussed: that of the distance hint, which is
| a separate hint from the arrow hint. Countries can be
| considered as single points for the arrow hint, and as
| masses for the distance hint.
| bspammer wrote:
| I don't know what you mean by "considered a mass" unless
| you mean "centre of mass", which is a point. If there are
| times where there are a lot of correct arrow
| designations, how is that not more confusing?
|
| In my opinion, using a different measure for the distance
| and direction would have been even more confusing. It's
| also a lot harder to program for a silly web game.
| daveed wrote:
| My reading of it is that it's easiest to program if they
| just ask google maps the latlon of the country and use
| that. It's a lot more work to base it off the closest
| border.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Please do
| Operyl wrote:
| Here's my n=1, I guessed it was "center" as opposed to
| borders, but I feel like this might be influenced by what
| country you play the game with first.
| amelius wrote:
| A good measure would be to take the median distance between
| any two points in the two countries.
|
| Median is great for removing outliers.
| mig39 wrote:
| Is it always the same country?
| hedgewitch wrote:
| It changes daily...like Wordle.
| einpoklum wrote:
| I guess NZ in one guess, and now I don't know how the game
| behaves :-(
| [deleted]
| frickinLasers wrote:
| For those who don't read in symbols, there are instructions if
| you click the "?" at the upper left.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| pimlottc wrote:
| UX feedback: the gray "?" icon is nearly invisible on a white
| background. I didn't see it at all at first.
|
| Fun game!
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| The thing I find fascinating about this is that it will need to
| become contentious by fall, either by repetition or by selecting
| territories which are historical and/or unrecognized by some
| subset of the world with a real or perceived stake in that.
| greatjack613 wrote:
| Anyone have a non new york times wordle alternative.
|
| Currently using https://wordlle.app, but I want something more
| authentic
| vga805 wrote:
| https://metzger.media/games/wordle-archive/?levels=select
|
| lags behind a day, and you can do all the previous days'
| wordles
| u2077 wrote:
| I'm using https://wordle.nyc it uses the original words and
| graphics.
| pepalgarid wrote:
| Not really a wordle alternative, but if you like memory
| challenges and flags you can try https://kobadoo.com
| dirtyid wrote:
| Would be nice to have some more geographic hints like rivers or
| major cities, i.e. night lights. Also as someone whose long term
| memory of geography is sustained by occasionally humming Yakko's
| world song, it's depressing to learn how inaccurate / out of date
| it is.
|
| See: Errors, Inaccuracies, and Other Geographical Trivia
| https://animaniacs.fandom.com/wiki/Yakko%27s_World_(song)
|
| Recommend Map men's "The mystery of the squarest country"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mrNEVUuZdk
| forgotmyoldacc wrote:
| What do the green dots represent? They only show up for a few
| seconds.
| bhelkey wrote:
| I'm assuming it is some loading animation.
| macintux wrote:
| Simulates the Wordle feedback: the more green dots, the closer
| you are.
| divbzero wrote:
| It would be cool if each dot represented a different
| variable:
|
| 1. Similarity in latitude
|
| 2. Similarity in longitude
|
| 3. Similarity in size
|
| 4. Similarity in population
|
| 5. Similarity in GDP
| heartbeats wrote:
| Should probably be population, population density, and
| GDP/capita. Nobody knows the GDP of Mexico, but they might
| know it's about the same as Serbia per capita.
| mepiethree wrote:
| Oh man I want this so badly. Might build it.
| rplnt wrote:
| If you do, do not include the image.
| LandR wrote:
| You can hide the image in worldle if you go into
| settings.
| heartbeats wrote:
| If you do, please add a "infinite play" mode!
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(page generated 2022-02-17 23:02 UTC)