[HN Gopher] 1973 implementation of Wordle was published by DEC (...
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1973 implementation of Wordle was published by DEC (2022)
Author : msephton
Score : 76 points
Date : 2025-11-01 01:56 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (troypress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (troypress.com)
| msephton wrote:
| DEC the company, not Dec the month. @dang
| satiated_grue wrote:
| Why did the programmer set up his Christmas tree on Halloween?
|
| Because OCT 31 == DEC 25
| gedy wrote:
| This is a case where the (2022) year thing really confuses!
| brk wrote:
| That and using Dec instead of DEC. Was having trouble parsing
| the title on this one.
| mouse_ wrote:
| HN does way too much "helpful" title normalization. @Dang pls
| fix
| voidUpdate wrote:
| > While some have traced Wordle to Lingo, a game show that
| started in 1987, they've missed an earlier implementation: WORD
| was published in 101 Computer Games by Digital Equipment Corp. in
| 1973
|
| Which comes after the board game Mastermind, which was created in
| 1970 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_(board_game))
| cachius wrote:
| Everything is a Remix
| https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| And the Mastermind variant "Word Mastermind" came out in 1972:
|
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5662/word-mastermind
| oasisbob wrote:
| Wow! That box cover image immediately brings me back to
| digging through the family board game box kept under my
| parents' bed. Vividly remember it, it was one of those
| mysterious/never-played games.
| doodpants wrote:
| But Word Mastermind (like regular Mastermind) only tells you
| how many letters are in the correct spot, and how many are
| present but not in the correct spot. Whereas Wordle tells you
| specifically _which_ letters fall into those categories. So
| it 's not quite the same. (That's why Wordle only gives you 6
| guesses, while Word Mastermind has 10 rows.)
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, a friend of mine mentioned the connection between Wordle
| and Mastermind which explained to me instantly why I really
| liked Mastermind (and even wrote an early Windows version) and
| Wordle--while being generally pretty indifferent to word games
| even though I'm a writer.
| jhbadger wrote:
| And JOTTO, a version that even used words like Wordle, is from
| 1955!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jotto
| oidar wrote:
| you can play it here: https://troypress.com/wp-
| content/uploads/user/js-basic/index...
|
| The program is named "Word"
| mwillis wrote:
| Always thought Wordle and similar computer games were just
| variants of Mastermind, forms of which go back many decades, if
| not further.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_(board_game)
| stronglikedan wrote:
| The popularity of Wordle (nothing new under the sun) indicates
| that there may be something to the phrase, it's not the idea
| but the implementation.
| II2II wrote:
| It's probably more of a case of, "what's old is new again."
| While implementation undoubtedly has something to do with it,
| Wordle probably caught on this time around due to it's
| digital packaging, the popularity of things seems to go in
| cycles.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Yes? Wordle _is_ Mastermind; the only variation is that most
| guesses are illegal.
|
| (Technically there are also more colors. I submit that the
| number of colors is not considered part of the ruleset of
| Mastermind.)
| loph wrote:
| This book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Computer_Games
|
| I was exposed to this book in about 1975 when I was in detention
| in the math teacher's room. It set me on a path to programming.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Crime pays;)
| gbacon wrote:
| The screenshots bring back memories of keying in BASIC on an
| Apple ][ monochrome green screen. With that intro, the first time
| I used QBasic, I remember marveling at not having to use line
| numbers.
| emchammer wrote:
| CALL -151 changed the course of my life.
| scythe wrote:
| We used to play Wordle in high school. Except it was called "the
| five-letter word game", and it was a competitive enterprise, in
| which several people would take turns guessing and the winner
| chose the next word.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| In 1980 they opened a new mall in Manchester, NH which was an
| hour from DEC's headquarters and they had an actual DEC _retail
| store_ that I bought a copy of that book from.
|
| Notably DEC machines like the PDP-11 gave a timesharing BASIC
| experience that was similar to having your own Apple ][ or TRS-80
| but a little bit better, probably the best thing was saving your
| files on a hard drive.
| loph wrote:
| I still have a PDP-11 Programming Card I bought at that Digital
| retail store. That was an interesting place. As I recall, there
| also was a AT&T store in that mall where you could buy...
| telephones.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I remember that AT&T store! Note that mall is
|
| https://www.simon.com/mall/the-mall-of-new-hampshire
|
| They built it around 1980 when they built 93 as a ring road
| going around the city and I remember Sears immediately moving
| from a downtown location at the North End of Elm street to
| the mall and then most of the other department stores on Elm
| going out of business shortly thereafter.
|
| As much as I could complain about the anti-pedestrian
| development of Southern NH that wants to be like a human lung
| and have exactly one path through the hierarchy from _here_
| to _there_ [1] I can say my family did profit from Rt 93
| because it caused the neighborhood I was in to develop so
| that the value of my house went up 1500%.
|
| [1] this guarantees you'll encounter multiple traffic jams
| when multiple parts of the hierarchy get overloaded
| sixothree wrote:
| Not directly related but there was a game called Muddled that
| focused on anagrams of 7 letter words that was such a time waster
| for me. Probably because seven letter words seem so much more
| fun.
| moomin wrote:
| 1970s? Way too recent. MOO dates from the 1960s and Bulls and
| Cows predates computers.
| TMWNN wrote:
| Lawrence Hall is not a person, but a science museum at UC
| Berkeley.
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Hall_of_Science>
| nopakos wrote:
| There is an effort to rewrite the games from the book Basic
| computer games in modern languages. The word game is here:
| https://github.com/coding-horror/basic-computer-games/tree/m...
| spullara wrote:
| it is amusing that they could have had a much better user
| interface for it back then even with just text.
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(page generated 2025-11-07 23:01 UTC)