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Comment by de_keyboard | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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