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.
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.
> 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.
Maybe you should have tried the other numbers
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!)
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.