Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations | Hacker News Reader

Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations

nerdlegame.com

344 pointsdzink141 comments

I made a solver for this and did some comparison with Wordle: https://jacobbrazeal.wordpress.com/2022/02/07/solving-nerdle.... TL;DR even though there's an order of magnitude more possible words, you can solve it in fewer average guesses than Wordle pretty consistently.

That's because there are fewer letters. In wordle, ignoring the fact that the word need to exists, you could make 5 guesses with 5 new letters each time and still not quite exhausting the letter space. With the math one, in two guesses you can figure out the digits.

Also, I play wordle in the hardest mode, which forces you to always reuse known letters, which makes it a lot harder. (I also playu in a clone with an extended vocabulary here: https://www.arachnoid.com/wordgame/index.html)

weird flex but ok

this is not reddit

Deduce https://apps.apple.com/us/app/deduce/id351558195 is not a wordle clone (it's been around over ten years), and is much harder than wordle. It is iOS only and costs $3.

You note that the interface accepts a lot more words than are in the dictionary, much like the normal Wordle game. I wonder if you can exploit the full set of acceptable words to narrow down the possibility space even further? I would not be surprised if there's an equation in the full set that performs better than the equation you initially selected.

It’s definitely possible. An exhaustive search would require tapping into the cloud since there are well over 100,000 words that the interface could use, times 17,000 target words, times the grading operation which is moderately expensive. My guess, though, is that the best starter word is number-dense since numbers show up in the middle of the frequency range, and therefore probably wouldn’t change. However, subsequent guesses would very likely benefit from the broader dictionary.

Eh, it’s about 1.7 billion operations. I suspect you could churn through those pretty fast in a language like C or Rust.

I get the same feeling as everyone. There is no point in the game because even a single digit wrong is no clue at all. In my 1st and only attempt, I entered 1 + 2+ 8 = 11 and both pluses, the 2 the 1 and the 8 were right, with only the 2 in the wrong position. And yet that gave zero clue to what the other number was... and it turned out to be another 8, which made finding the solution really luck-based.

Ha! I played the exact same first game!

https://pasteboard.co/NYP4YfnNj0kk.jpg

? As in Worldle itself (except in hard mode), you don't need to match what you've deduced already . So, your second line could have been some equation with (most of) the digits 3,4,5,7,9 (and whatever you need to make it an equation). The colour of those then would have told you all you need to know to win.

So it's an interesting distinction that Wordle is generally solvable in "hard mode", but the same constraint makes Nerdle almost impossible.

Worldle hard mode is solvable but it requires being very careful, and basically never typing in certain words.

For example: bills,dills,fills,gills,hills,kills,mills,pills,sills,tills,wills

If the answer is any of these words and you guess the wrong words once, you are unable to guarantee a win (outside of hard mode you could try guessing words to eliminate many letters at once)

I find that constraint to be roughly, if not more, frustrating than commutativity (which doesn’t even apply to subtraction or division!)

You could've won if you skipped 5, which was eliminated in the first guess.

that is so odd - I think I had the same situation as well. I'm not particularly numeric so I was briefly excited (I tried an available number and realized it fit!) but then figured out that there were multiple solution.

And finally lost because I too didn't realize that I could re-use an 8. I'd feel bad but it could have been any of the choices I did take so ... maybe not so fun.

As others have said, you can (and often should) make guesses that don't satisfy all the clues you've found so far. That way you can find / eliminate symbols much more quickly.

It's funny there are so many people saying how much they hate it. All power to you. But personally I like it way more than Wordle.

I basically like the solving part of Wordle but hate the thinking up words aspect. Nerdle fixes that, but the equation bit keeps it more interesting than a meaningless string of symbols.

Similar to how I prefer the numbers round on Countdown [1] to the main letters game.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_(game_show)

I prefer the numbers round in Countdown as well, but much (much, much) prefer Wordle to Nerdle. Nerdle is an attempt to make a Wordle for numbers, but to me it just doesn't work. Today I quickly got 2+?+8=1?. Clearly ? can be any digit from 0 to 9. I had four tries left so a 40% chance of winning with no skill involved (I lost incidentally).

Well first, the ? can't be 1, 2, or 8, right?

And second, you could guess equations without 1, 2, or 8 to narrow down the missing digit in only two more guesses.

Edit: Brain fart on the first part, but I think the second part would have helped within three more guesses.

I think the answer was 8, I can't quite remember. Your second point is definitely a good one though, didn't think of that.

Yes it could unfortunately. The solution repeated a number, making it almost impossible to guarantee a correct answer even if you had the majority down fairly early.

That situation is exactly what my first paragraph was about.

> As others have said, you can (and often should) make guesses that don't satisfy all the clues you've found so far. That way you can find / eliminate symbols much more quickly.

Just fyi, that paragraph is clear and unambiguous. Ironic that billforsternz chose to post his concerns in response to a comment which had addressed them.

In retrospect I agree with you actually, not my best and brightest moment.

Why would you put three ones?

Maybe you should have tried the other numbers

This... doesn't work well. There are too many possible solutions given the clues, making it just luck.

Consider:

   2 + _ + 8 = 1 _

Now _ could be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0

The trick is to rule out as many digits as possible using guesses that you know are wrong.

9 + 4 + 7 = 20 for example is a more efficient guess than naively trying to guess each pair.

And there are even better guesses if you just use digits.

Yeah, and as with Wordle, I think there is some strategy that can be employed in the first couple guesses to aggressively eliminate digits and operators. Currently I use 3 * 5 + 2 = 17 as my first guess in order to try all the prime digits, 1, and the "easier" operators. There are probably better options though...

Interesting. I like "sum of two double digit numbers = double digit number." In Wordle I usually hunt for vowels, which I guess the equivalent thing here would be hunting for operators. But somehow it feels like knocking out digits is more useful here -- I guess because of the increased chance of repetition.

It is the same thing as with Wordle, when there is only one letter missing and you have to iterate over the possibilities. In words, however, typically there are only 2-3 correct choices.

nerdlegame 20 3/6

gkmkkgkg

ggkgkggg (emojis didn't render right in HN)

gggggggg

Knowing the answer I then opened a new tab to try something [that I won't detail to minimize spoilers for today's puzzle] and got linked to

> >Number ordering and 'commutativity'

> We get it. 1+2 and 2+1 are effectively the same in maths because of a principle called ‘commutativity’. In the same way, 34 = 43.

> However in Nerdle, the only perfectly correct answer is the one we're looking for, in the order we have it. So if our answer contains 1+2, we won’t accept 2+1.

> We've spent hours playing with alternative commutative-friendly rules that would allow both 1+2 and 2+1. But so far, every variant we’ve tried is simply not as fun to play.

> If you feel the commutativity challenge costs you an extra attempt at a Nerdle challenge unfairly, you can always delete one line from your game emojis before you share them. We won’t tell anyone, promise.

The same issue afflicts mathle http://mathlegame.com/ and I think poses a fundamental issue with this game. In spelling there is a definite order. With commutative mathematical operations, not so. WRODLE!=WORDLE but 1+2+3==2+3+1. They might LOOK like different sentences, but they are not. They are the same. Sure, the glyphs are in different orders, but no aspect of the Platonic sum can distinguish them. They are one.

RAISE and ARISE both mean 'the lift up', but they're different words, and you're not going to win a wordle for 'ARISE' with 'RAISE'.

I'm not sure how you would want to win for getting the right number in the wrong place in a game which provides clues to find the right places by telling you when you have the right numbers in the wrong places.

Re RAISE and ARISE: they are not pointers to the same place in wordspace in the same way that 1+2+3 and 2+3+1 are in sumspace.

Re your second point: I love wordle. I'd love a game with similar game play that obeyed mathematical principles. It seems that nobody has found the right set of rules yet! That's why I've been trying these once and stopping. I don't find their rules beautiful in the same way that I do wordle's.

We could be extremely, reductively classical about it and say that all of Nerdle's answers point to the same place (⊤, since any answer equivalent to ⊥ is disallowed by the rules), but the real answer is that Nerdle—like Wordle—is simply about finding the right piece of syntax, not finding the right semantics.

This is very frustrating. It's like Wordle but without any of the nice or enjoyable elements.

I enjoyed it fwiw.

What frustrated me was the guessing. By equation 3 I had everything narrowed down except the 1s place in the answer which was same as number in the equation. So, I spent the next 3 guesses trying the remaining digits, and eventually losing with 2 more digits left to try.

The trick is making guesses that you know are incorrect to rule out multiple digits at once.

What do you mean by incorrect? The equation has to be valid, according to the rules. At some point I ended up with 2 + <x> + 8 = 1<y> where x = y because of math. I had 5 guesses left and 8 possibilities. That's just gambling without the money at that point.

I guess he means construct an entirely different equation without using 2, 8 and 1 (you had same issue as me BTW).

I don't really enjoy that at all personally, but it is a thing one could do.

I don't guess impossible words in Wordle either :)

Yeah I feel the same way. I want wordle to be about guessing words, not constructing some max entropy string within the constraints.

I use that same strategy in Wordle. Most often my first word is SOARE and the second is MINTY… unless I got like three matches in the first word, it’s better to get extra data quickly.

You should give hard mode a try. That makes it a lot less repetitive and more fun.

TIL about hard mode. That's just how I've been playing naturally; force use the found letters in subsequent guesses.

It's all fun until you get something like FIGHT where the last four letters are right and have to just guess from LIGHT, MIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT, TIGHT, WIGHT, anything I might have missed, and there's no way to use any strategy and you just have to randomly guess and hope you guess right.

You can guess WARMS, which will either give you the answer (to input on the next try) or eliminate 4 of the possibilities, leaving only 2 to guess.

That's a best case of 2 additional guesses and worst case of 3 (expectation of 2 1/3) which is better than your strategy, which has a best case of 1, worst case 6, expectation 3 1/2.

The comment I replied to started with "You should give hard mode a try." In hard mode, WARMS is not a valid followup guess.

That's true for regular mode, but WARMS would be an invalid guess in hard mode once the last four letters have been established as IGHT.

I can see that happening, although for some reason it hardly ever does with my usual guess strategies. I've only had one word result in a few candidates. The fact that it happened immediately and almost unavoidably in the nerdle made me think this really wasn't for me.

This situation is technically possible, but I'd be surprised to already have 4/5 letters, and not have already tested R, S, L, or N (N from NIGHT). There are all one point scrabble letters after all. I could see myself needing to roll the dice on MIGHT, TIGHT, WIGHT.

Sometimes it's what you need to do. If you know _IGHT, guessing the solution is not the best strategy since you get so little information each turn. You're much better off with FILMS or BLOWN, even if you know they can't be the solution.

Hard mode in Wordle precludes that option; after weeks in that mode in Wordle it would never occur to me to put an entirely bogus set of numbers into this.

I haven't played hard mode, but i imagine part of an optimal strategy is trying not to paint yourself into a corner like that. Just the other day, i had SHA_E and knew there were more possible solutions than i had turns left. I guessed MILKY to try 3 possibilities at once.

you can make guesses that you know won't be the correct answer but eliminate the other choices (i.e. don't include 2, 8, or 1 in your guesses)

He means guess something like: 56+34=90

Then you can see which number turns purple or use 8 if none do.

Then you try to use those 8 possibilities (if not all) in the next round to eliminate some or most of them to quickly narrow down the scope of guessing

You can test every digit and symbol in 2 guesses. Once you’ve done that it normally takes another 1 or 2 guesses to get the answer.

Yes, notably there is no hard mode. Elimination seems necessary in order to have a chance of completing in 6 tries.

I am enjoying this one much more:

https://www.mathler.com/

You just described nearly every clone.

I liked it but I don’t like the 1+2 != 2+1 ; I understand why it is but that is just annoying throwing away one go that you cannot really know. Which is different from Wordle, game play wise.

EDIT: game's over. It's already been done: https://rwmpelstilzchen.gitlab.io/wordles/

Is anyone keeping track? So now we have:

*wordlists*:

- [wordle](https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/): wordlist picked by creators partner

- [byrdle](https://rbrignall.github.io/byrdle/): wordlist has to do with choral music

- [lewdle](https://www.lewdlegame.com): lewd words

- [sweardle](https://sweardle.com/): 4 letter "sweary" words

- [plantle](https://plantle.netlify.app/): herbs/fruit/flora/shrooms/etc

- [digitaltolkein](https://digitaltolkien.github.io/vue-wordle/): lotr words

- [taylordle](https://www.taylordle.com/): words from taylor swift lyrics

*math*:

- [primel](https://converged.yt/primel/): 5-digit primes

- [nerdle](https://nerdlegame.com/): math equations

- [mathler](https://www.mathler.com): math equations

- [mathle](https://mathlegame.com/): math equations

- [hexle](https://jamesl.me/hexle/): guess the hexadecimal number

- [byrtle](https://jamesl.me/bytle/): guess in base-10, but answers/guesses are converted to binary

*other*:

- [squirdle](https://squirdle.fireblend.com/): pokemon, tells you if you got the right gen, type, weight, etc

- [absurdle](https://qntm.org/files/absurdle/absurdle.html): adversarial wordle

- [dordle](https://zaratustra.itch.io/dordle): 2 words at once

- [quordle](https://www.quordle.com/): 4 words at once

- [wordle](https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/): countries, correctness based on distance

- [letterle](https://edjefferson.com/letterle/): one letter

- [squareword](https://squareword.org/): 2 dimensions!

languages:

- [言葉で遊ぼう](https://taximanli.github.io/kotobade-asobou/): kana (Japanese)

- [wordle (es)](https://wordle.danielfrg.com/): spanish

not wordle:

- [three magic words](https://www.threemagicwords.app/)

---

Edit: added suggestions, categorized them, and added descriptions

I guess I'm the one keeping track

Also Byrdle, for Anglican Choral Music:

https://rbrignall.github.io/byrdle/

What's next: choosing political parties to form a coalition government.

Pokemon: https://squirdle.fireblend.com/

Don't forget [lewdle](https://www.lewdlegame.com), wordle but with only dirty words.

And [mathler](https://www.mathler.com) which is the same as OP

Thank you for preformatting :P Mathler seems a little less chaotic. I think I could actually enjoy nerdle if it had some limitation on one of the many variables to account for. Mathler seems to do exactly that

Yeah after I wrote that I realized that on this one you have to solve for both the left and right size of the equation, whereas mathler tells you right right side. I think I prefer mathler for this reason.

My favorite so far is Dordle https://zaratustra.itch.io/dordle

How exactly does this work? There's no instructions I can find anywhere

There are two words. You only get to make one guess at a time, and it shows you the results for both words. The goal is to guess both words in seven guesses.

thank you!

Same as Wordle, except more so. You're guessing two five-letter words at once.

[worldle] https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/

also Globle: https://globle-game.com/

Here's one I made earlier: Plantle[0]

[0]:https://plantle.netlify.app/

math/other/idk exactly tbh:

- [bytle](https://jamesl.me/bytle)

- [hexle](https://jamesl.me/hexle)

[sweardle](https://sweardle.com/): 4 letter words

[Letterle](https://edjefferson.com/letterle/): one letter

thanks I hate it

Also Lordle of the Rings: https://digitaltolkien.github.io/vue-wordle/

Why do only two words at once with dordle when you could do four words at once with https://www.quordle.com

Japanese: https://taximanli.github.io/kotobade-asobou/

Taylordle: https://www.taylordle.com/ -- words from Taylor Swift lyrics

Anyone done a flappy birdle yet?

spanish: https://wordle.danielfrg.com/ 4 words in a square: https://squareword.org

In Spanish you can win almost all gameplays with "aires" or "seria" as the starting word.

ahh, nice :-) I got the word today but didn't actually know it was a word or what it meant. However, I'm enjoying the challenge and the chance to practice thinking through 5-letter words in Spanish

There is a fair-sized (417 entries) list over here:

https://rwmpelstilzchen.gitlab.io/wordles/

Ah thank you. I can get back to work now

Replying so I can find this later. Thanks!

If you click on the comment directly ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30262341 ) you can click the favorite link.

That will then let you find it via https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=somethingAlex&comm... (which is private) which can be found on your profile page.

If you're including Letterle, you might as well add Horsle where the word is just always "Horse". https://horsle.glitch.me/

Also, really only relevant in NYC, but [Subwaydle](https://www.subwaydle.com/)

I didn't think this would work... but then I solved it and now I think it could be fun. Looking forward to tomorrow's game!

I played it for a while but found myself constantly opening my calculator or counting on my fingers. I failed at 4th grade times tables lol. I could solve it every time, between 4 and 6 tries, but it was just annoying to have to deal with stuff like that, and that it requires specific numbers in spaces...not expressions with the same numbers that evaluate the same e.g. 48/8+3=9 != 3+48/8=9.

This game type works so much better with word, at least with my brain.

This is fun but the different colors (or rather, lack of color) are way too subtle for me. It takes me conscious effort to distinguish "correct-character-wrong-position" from "correct-character-correct-position".

It probably also doesn't help that I'm seeing also seeing tons of phantom dots from the grid illusion [0]...

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_illusion

I solved it in six using only three unique digits and one unique operator (excluding the required equals of course). I expected it to be more varied and grew more despondent as all of the digits and operators dropped away. Even with the restricted character set I'd expect the operators could produce some varied gameplay, but from the one puzzle I got I'm not too hopeful. Are these hand-designed, or random for each person?

If it's like wordle, then everyone gets the same puzzle on a given day. Your description matches what I played today (and is a partial spoiler; one great thing about wordle is that people have been good about not spoiling it). Tomorrow's may be quite different.

Upon solving, I got a popup saying the next puzzle would be available exactly six hours from then. I suspected that meant that puzzles would be released to me on my schedule, and may or may not be unique.

After looking at today’s puzzle, I don’t think it’s any more intriguing than yesterday’s after all. I got it on the 3rd guess this time.

I prefer to open with: 2*3+8=14 or 84/7-5=7.

I find it tremendous important to find which place the equals sign is in while eliminating operators and digits.

3*4+-7=5 and 10=8/2+6 cover everything but 9.

Ooh, that is good. I figured that +- would be invalid but nerdle accepts it.

9 * 6 - 3 = 51 and 28 / 4 + 0 = 7 will cover everything and allow you to determine the = position.

That is fantastic, kudos to you for finding a way to cover those extra two digits. I am going to use this opener.

Cool idea.

But here’s the first game I played: https://pasteboard.co/NYP4YfnNj0kk.jpg

Perfect example of why this doesn’t really work. I didn’t have enough information to narrow down the possible values that could solve the missing parts of the equation I stumbled on in the remaining tries.

You don't have to play hard mode. No need to guess what you deduced already, you can make a guess that doesn't use your previous deductions.

Once you have the basic shape you make a guess where you collect as much information as possible. This was my attempt at the same equation https://imgur.com/a/7qGUC6k

I found its 2 easy. my first attempt is always 23+45=68. at that point i covered most of the possible symbols.

Well that was frustrating [1]. I know I should have guessed a different equation but I was like "there's no way I won't get it"...

[1] https://imgur.com/a/AclSjx8

Something like this is better, as the old TV game show https://kitsune.tuxfamily.org/wiki/doku.php?id=homepage

I somehow managed to get the right-hand side of the equation correct on the first try, which made finding the left-hand side fairly easy. I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrow to try the game out for real.

Click the cog and enable "mini Nerdle" for another (easier) challenge

Is the UI really slow to react for anybody else? Button clicks have a noticeable lag for me on Safari on iOS. I get the same thing on some other Wordle clones and archives, but not the main Wordle site.

Wew. That was surprisingly fun!

I managed to do it in three guesses, but man was I slow.

Seems the strategy is to eliminate as many numbers/operators before you attempt to guess. Was able to get it in 4 as by the second row I had the set of values to work with.

It looks like they updated it because I used to be able to do 1+-/*23= and it would accept it because it couldn't compute it as incorrect.

I don't like that it doesn't understand that the equation doesn't change if I move stuff.

I had x+y+x=z and it won't accept y+x+x or x+x+y

I'd be curious to know how success/failure metrics look after a few days of users. How many actually reach success?

Edit: I passed, barely.

Did you make any guesses that couldn't possibly be correct given previous feedback? I made one by accident. facepalm

On https://jamesl.me/hexle/ I made a guess that couldn't possibly be correct on purpose so that I could guess more digits. I've done the same with wordle. It's probably the least useful w/ Nerdle because it's just 9 digits.

On Firefox 97.0 (64-bit) macOS 10.15.7 (19H2) - pressing "/" opens up "Quick Find"

I notice it doesn't have a "hard mode" like Wordle, I assume that's just too difficult?

I don't get the game, is there something lacking in which you need to explain to us properly?

Gosh I thought it was going to be some hardass PDE questions.

Division is a bit limited without a decimal point.

I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would!

nerdlegame 20 6/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛

https://nerdlegame.com #nerdle

ok so no emoji in comments I guess

Sir, this is a Wendy's.