Wordle Tips

I think I've cracked the code on Wordle, the rare trend I'm full-heartedly conforming to.

I've guessed correctly in row 3 three days in a row now. Here's Saturday's result:

...and here's Sunday:

...and here's yesterday:

Here's my actual screen for yesterday:

1. I always start with "Early", to start pinning down vowels. I used to have an even more vowely word, but it is, alas, lost.

2. "Tries" was not a guess. Don't guess! It's not that game! Tries has "S" last (very common), and adds one of the missing vowels, plus the common "T". It also tries to locate the "R" and "E". Your second row should have no wasted letters. Every letter should introduce new common letters and/or reposition known letters (in this case, two repositions and three introductions).

3. By row three, if you followed the above strategy (no guessing!!), you have more info than you might initially think.

Obviously, "I" is #3.

"R" is #1,#4, or #5. We can eliminate #5, as I couldn’t think of a common word that worked with these included/excluded letters. So "R" is either #1 or #4

"S" is #1, #2, or #4. I can't think of any words that would put it #2. So "S" (like "R") is either #1 or #4

"E" obviously can't be #3. And it can't be #1 or #4, because they're occupied by "I" or "S" (one way or the other). So "E" is either #2 or #5. It was unlikely to be #2 (“EI”), so it's #5. I got lucky that it wasn’t “reign” (and “deign” and “feign” don’t use an “R”, and also are too obscure for Wordle).

So here's where we’re at: (S/R) (?) (I) (R/S) (E).

There are two possibilities: SPIRE, or SHIRE (it can't be RAISE because "A" is excluded).

Wordly only uses common everyday words...and spire's a bit obscure. Shire might seem uncommon, too, but remember: the puzzle's produced by a Brit.

Update: I just did it again today. I won’t spoil todays puzzle for you, but here is my result:

Apple Arcade and Leff's Law of Green M&Ms

Leff's Law of Green M&Ms states that if you absolutely hate green M&Ms, you'll be increasingly horrified by larger and larger bowls of M&Ms, simply because there will be more green ones....even though the proportion remains the same.

Apple has this new Apple Arcade thing ("Play Extraordinary!"). $5/month buys you unlimited access to a big basket of games for all your various screens. No in-app purchases, either. I signed up, but I'm hardly making any use of it. Why? Because amid the dozens of games are a bunch that are not my thing.

I dislike super-realistic games. If I want to experience The World, I go outside. I look to video games for abstraction and for heightened, contrived experience. I don't want to have stilted conversation with uncanny valley characters so I can solve the mystery of the thing with the thing. I don't want an experience of The World, only crappier. I don't want to discover and build and learn when I still don't speak French and can't do a backflip.

But as I rifle through Apple Arcade, those sorts of games (trailer porn designed to look awesome in short demo clips) stick out conspicuously. And even though I'm aware of the Green M&Ms effect, I still can't control my psychology. It feels like that's what it is, and I don't visit much.

Salinger, Chowhound, and "Flappy Bird"

An app called "Flappy Bird" created by an indie game designer in Vietnam become a phenom, sailing to the top of the charts and creating an absolute sensation. As with all sensations - including ones as innocent and well-intentioned as this cute little game - there were a host of concurrent nasty rumors (all baseless) and savage criticism (all overblown), fed by sharply-worded media reports from outlets thrashing for a share of all the attention. The guy received death threats. It was a circus, a nightmare, all over nothing but a cheerful little game.

Last week, at the apex of its popularity, the designer pulled Flappy Bird from the market, explaining that he wanted his life back. Read the story here, and a follow-up interview with the designer here.

That move blew everyone's mind. The tech world and media struggled to make sense of it. Why would anyone recede from limelight? Fresh nefarious rumors were spun and more harsh articles were written. Is he sick in the head? Why wouldn't he welcome this sort of attention?

For my part, I couldn't believe their disbelief. Here's my perspective on JD Salinger, another guy presumed mentally ill for rejecting limelight. And for a hound's eye view of an earlier Internet phenom, have a read through the story of my adventure creating, managing, and selling Chowhound.com.

Text Adventure Game Nostalgia

I've never seen a computer game that came close to the Infocom adventure games of the 1980's (played by typing instructions into a bleak scrolling window of text). Perhaps I feel this way because these are the games I played when I was young. Or perhaps it's true. You decide...by playing Zork, or, even wittier, but requiring slight familiarity with the original book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Here are other versions of those games, plus a bunch of others, all playable online.

You can also play these games on your iPhone/iPad/iTouch, via a free app called Frotz (link opens iTunes).

The grandaddy of the genre was the original "Adventure" (aka Colossal Cave), now available as a 64-bit(!) application for Mac OS.

If you're not sure what to do, simply type something and hit a return ("help", without the quotation marks, is a good way to start).

Warning: this stuff is really, really, seriously old school...