[HN Gopher] Binary Wordle
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Binary Wordle
Author : eh8
Score : 245 points
Date : 2025-06-04 02:57 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wordle.chengeric.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wordle.chengeric.com)
| patrakov wrote:
| Step 1: Guess 00000.
|
| Step 2: Replace all grey cells with 1s.
| petra303 wrote:
| Yea, you don't need more than two chances.
| bbassett wrote:
| and now we know how raid parity works
| topato wrote:
| This is some how the most concise description of parity
| ever
| arjvik wrote:
| Came here to present my strategy for solving it in two tries,
| and realized it was far more complicated! (started with 00011)
| jesse__ wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| This should be correct. For any cell that isn't green after
| your first guess, there's only one other possibility for its
| value.
| selcuka wrote:
| Yes. Yellow and grey mean exactly the same thing in this
| game: Flip it.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Hoping that you are being sarcastic...
| dskloet wrote:
| It's not guaranteed you will always win in 2 steps because
| occasionally you will win in 1 step.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Isn't 1 within the bounds of 2?
| paxys wrote:
| Step 1: Guess anything
|
| Step 2: Flip all the non green cells.
| underlines wrote:
| 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
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It's still two steps. You only ever need to flip wrong
| digits.
| paxys wrote:
| 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.
| heckelson wrote:
| And for a second, I was proud that I solved mine in 3 steps...
| 0xAFFFF wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I think displaying black or white pixels makes a bigger
| difference.
| bdcs wrote:
| > 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
| stavros wrote:
| I got zero right: https://imgz.org/i6yJQnf4.png
| gus_massa wrote:
| I solved it in one attempt! https://imgur.com/a/jklkc7F
|
| Spoiler alert: There is a nice video by Captain Disillusion
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou7KSmfC3lA (the relevant
| part is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou7KSmfC3lA&t=275s )
| a3w wrote:
| I think I saw a two.
|
| There is no such thing as a two, Bender!
| layer8 wrote:
| There may be FileNotFound, though.
|
| https://thedailywtf.com/articles/what_is_truth_0x3f_
| freedomben wrote:
| There should be a 1 in 1,000 chance that a two slips in to
| one of the puzzles, and then can't be reproduced.
| Sesse__ wrote:
| I intended this strategy, but 00000 happened to be correct, so
| I didn't even need a step 2.
| thehours wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| You may not need the refresh, with Safari I have to select the
| game board again after focus is moved by clicking "play again".
| itishappy wrote:
| Is it possible to get yellow cells?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Huh, surprisingly difficult to get. Took me 8 or so attempts.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| I see what you did there
| odo1242 wrote:
| I somehow got lucky and guessed the answer in just one try lol
| rossant wrote:
| How lucky of you. You had one chance out of 100000.
| dhsysusbsjsi wrote:
| I guessed 00000 and won first go!
| Bimos wrote:
| Same here.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| hmm. I guessed something different (010001 maybe, I cant
| remember) and won first go too. I looked in the comments hoping
| to find the joke. I guess I'm 1 of the 10 people who don't
| understand binary jokes.
| cnity wrote:
| Good one! I'm the other of the 10.
| thih9 wrote:
| For context, the original joke is:
|
| > There are 10 kinds of people in this world -- those who
| understand binary and those who don't.
|
| There are other versions too[1][2][3].
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7036594
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7040175
|
| [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25854900
| kylec wrote:
| Got it in one on my second game! Felt pretty good till I realized
| that's like 1/32 chance.
| selcuka wrote:
| The probability of getting it right at least once in your first
| 2 attempts is even higher (6.15%).
| kcaseg wrote:
| Bit masking : the game
| mulmen wrote:
| Got it in 10.
| Black616Angel wrote:
| I was a bit sad, when it didn't display my number of tries as a
| 10.
| mccolin wrote:
| There's 10 types of people in this world: those that get that
| joke and those that don't.
| makerofthings wrote:
| There are 2 kinds of people in this world, those that can
| extrapolate from incomplete data.
| taneq wrote:
| And fence post errors.
| rodnim wrote:
| And those who know this joke is actually in base 3. :)
| sidcool wrote:
| It should be solvable in no more than 2 moves.
| UnreachableCode wrote:
| Don't you mean 10 moves?
| amanverasia wrote:
| The only reason I logged into my account is to give you an
| upvote!
| nickburlett wrote:
| Feature request: a "share" button, a la base-26 Wordle.
| schindlabua wrote:
| Hilariously dumb
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Made me chuckle out loud.
| abotsis wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It's not supposed to be fun or hard, it's supposed to be funny.
| It's absurdist humor.
| umvi wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Someone should make a base-26 version! It would probably be
| super popular!
| asimovDev wrote:
| https://horsle.glitch.me reminds me of this
| tetris11 wrote:
| quite difficult, there aren't many horse anagrams
| wongogue wrote:
| My trick is to use HORSE as the starting word.
| jshprentz wrote:
| SHORE
| Aissen wrote:
| I love that someone went all the way to write and publish this
| joke. Keep hacking!
| gowld wrote:
| 1 minute and 2 1-sentence prompts:
| https://g.co/gemini/share/a14f3f1b1c1c
|
| Gemini self-improved version (added the "Hint" and "What could
| it mean?" features): https://g.co/gemini/share/05c8cce3b2ff
| citizenfishy wrote:
| Isn't this just Mastermind?
| zaik wrote:
| No, this is much simpler.
| jansan wrote:
| More like Minionmind.
| maaaaattttt wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| tylerchr wrote:
| My wife took one look at this and said "It's not Wordle if it's
| all binary--it's Digitle."
| HPsquared wrote:
| Reminds me of the idea of analogue cheese - fake cheese. It's
| analogue cheese until you get some on your fingers, when it
| becomes digital cheese.
| layer8 wrote:
| Well...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_(computer_architecture)
| selcuka wrote:
| 5 bits would be a weird size for a word.
| layer8 wrote:
| I don't think the parent's argument would change if he had
| made an 8-bit Wordle.
| flysand7 wrote:
| Knuth's "Art of Programming" had a hypothetical machine
| with 5-bit words.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Baudotle
| gowld wrote:
| It's not Wordle because because it's only 5 bits. There are no
| remotely common 5-bit word systems.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_(computer_architecture)#T...
| soneca wrote:
| I guessed my first game in the first attempt! (10011)
| teekert wrote:
| What are the odds!
| soneca wrote:
| 3.125% I believe :)
| thrance wrote:
| 1 in 32
| eckesicle wrote:
| Me too!
| drooopy wrote:
| Guessed my first game in 2 attempts.
| celticninja wrote:
| Isn't it always possible to get this on guess 2?
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Yes. I think that's the joke.
| october8140 wrote:
| Got it. Second try.
| sarmadgulzar wrote:
| So, this can be solved in at least one and at most two attempts.
| AmsterErdo wrote:
| I think I don't get it... since it's binary, it can always be
| guessed in two attempts?
| awwaiid wrote:
| Yes. You can still try to get it in one attempt.
| brookst wrote:
| Odds in one attempt: 1 in 32
|
| Odds in two attempts: 1 in 1
| xandrius wrote:
| Ooops:
|
| You won!
|
| You guessed 01111 in 4 attempts!
| dskloet wrote:
| Your odds add up to more than 1.
| tonmoy wrote:
| Odds of getting it within 2 attempts is 1. Odds of
| getting it on exactly the second attempt is 31/32
| pteetor wrote:
| Probabilities sum to 1.0. Odds don't sum.
| gamerDude wrote:
| It took me 10 tries...
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| The classics are classics for a reason
| financypants wrote:
| That's pretty good, considering they give you 110 tries
| joseph_scott wrote:
| +1
| williamdclt wrote:
| I _think_ it's humorous!
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| I'm glad I figured that out after my first attempt. I feel
| smart lol.
| James-Livesey wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The hint actually makes it harder since I was required to guess
| a 0 and a F each time
| alloysmila wrote:
| only two attempts are ever needed :-(
| clocker wrote:
| Nice game. I got the answer in 1 try in my first attempt!
|
| https://imgur.com/a/W4OjObH
| clocker wrote:
| I made a game not exactly on the same line but related to
| decimal and binary numbers https://www.squashbyte.com/
|
| Hope you like it!
| lazerman wrote:
| The number of guesses should be written in binary too!
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Why 5 rows? Just have two.
| NoSalt wrote:
| I did it in two attempts ... read it and weep, suckas!
| ratbum wrote:
| Eat shit! https://photos.app.goo.gl/t3cEcgKLYe7e7Dfx7
| HenryBemis wrote:
| 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?
| IAmBroom wrote:
| That didn't get it?
|
| No, sadly.
| morcus wrote:
| 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.
| igitur wrote:
| I'm waiting for the NY Times to sue this one too.[1]
|
| [1] https://apnews.com/article/new-york-times-wordle-clones-
| take...
| bitwrangler wrote:
| I like the UI and cute idea, nice animation. great way to learn
| xor $FF haha.
| meindnoch wrote:
| It's not wordle. It's bytle.
| eludwig wrote:
| Closer to a nibble!
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| bittle?
| drdec wrote:
| With this game, there is no try. There is do or do not.
| seabass wrote:
| I love that not only are the inputs binary, but so are the
| results.
| NotAnOtter wrote:
| 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"
| nicwolff wrote:
| I, uh, got it in two. Is it creepy that the answer is my ZIP
| code?
| b0a04gl wrote:
| bitmask bruteforce took 5 ops max.solving fizzbuzz with a GPU.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| recently I encountered a game that had "wordle, but with numbers"
| as one of its puzzles
|
| https://semenar.itch.io/lost-in-space
| zck wrote:
| 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.
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