Solving Wordle...with science! | Opinion | News | The University of Aberdeen
Addicted to Wordle? Professor Nir Oren, Director of Research at the School of Natural and Computing Sciences, has a formula that provides the answer to the question we are all asking: ‘What is the best word to start with?’
Wordle has intrigued and frustrated millions around the world. Articles covering 'the best word to start with from a X point of view' abound (where X can include linguistics, mathematics, astrology, or some other 'expert'). I thought I'd add to this list of articles, approaching the problem from an AI point of view, and explaining why the optimal word I suggest is indeed the best word possible.
If you are unfamiliar with it, Wordle is a word guessing game. Each day, users get six attempts to guess a five letter word. After every attempt, colours indicate which letters are correct and in the right place (green), correct but in the wrong place (yellow), or simply incorrect (grey). A good player will guess words in an order which eliminates many other possibilities, narrowing down candidate words as they go along.
So what makes a good word to guess? Let's assume we have N candidate words, and no additional information. After we make a guess, we'll get some combination of five grey, green or yellow colours in a specific order as feedback. How many such feedback combinations are possible? Well, if we had a one letter word, we could have 3 possible feedbacks (just the colours themselves); if we had two letter words, 3x3 feedbacks are possible (as any combination of colours for each letter must be considered), and extending this to five letters, there are a total of 3x3x3x3x3 = 243 such feedbacks possible.
