Solving Wordle using information theory

Imagine Grant's friend innocently telling him that his Wordle opener was "weary", only for him to publish a 30-minute essay on why that's stupid a week later😅

creating an algorithm for this and comparing them against each other sounds like it would have made a great programming competition

The position of letters is a factor. For example, I prefer TALES over SALET ( SALET is recommended by others who have done computer analysis of this game) because if I do NOT get a green S, then that rules out a huge number of plural four-letter nouns with an S on the end, like BOOMS. Note that I am getting a lot of information out an absence of a match there. Though Y is a fairly rare letter, it turns up at the end of a lot of five-letter words. Letters like L, R and H are important beyond their commonness because they often combine with other consonants as in BLAND, PROSE, and CHAIR.

Never have I ever been tricked into enjoying a math class like this. I wish I had you instead of all my college professors

Interesting video, real good stuff. Gonna keep using PENIS but this was really cool and informative!

Grant: “this video’s getting kinda long.” Me: “what are we at, like 10? 15 minutes? He’s got plenty of time!” Me after checking clock: “oh…”

The amount of preparation work in order to produce a video like this is unbelievable.. truly impressive work.

A year later and my blind devotion to your original video has paid off. Thank you kindly!

I love those sketches you put in when depicting real life situations, like the conversation between Von Neumann and Shannon 12:01!

4:00 note that the list used in Wordle is the exact list of words allowed in international tournament Scrabble. It's called CSW19.

This video is so well done. The word play at 18:40, the hidden messages in the game at 25:25... This video gives me "Gödel, Escher, Bach" vibes, and that is something that has never happened to me since I read that book. Awesome.

Just realised WORDLE now has a "hard mode" where you MUST use existing information in future guesses (i.e. if you get a green first letter and yellow fourth letter, future guesses HAVE to start with that same first letter and mix that other letter around). Curious how this would affect the amount of information obtained at each guess, particularly with an algorithm looking ahead multiple guesses.

thanks for making this. now people will stop asking me to make this video, lol

18:38 I bet you had a lot of fun writing that bit

On Jun 21, 2023 I put down the word CRANE and to my amazement, it was the word of the day! Its the only word I got on my first try

I adore your teaching style of gradually building upon simple intuitions until you've reached a rigorous and useful conclusion. It makes so many subjects easier to understand and I hope I get to use it someday

Came for the wordle, stayed for the awesome lesson on information theory. Cool!

Edit: For more details on how the "best" opener was chosen, and why there was a slight mistake here such that CRANE actually drops to #6, see the follow-on video https://youtu.be/fRed0Xmc2Wg For a human playing Wordle, I'm not sure I'd actually recommend starting with CRANE, or any of the ones best for one of these algorithms, since it requires also knowing what it will do for second guesses. For example, here's the start of the mapping for what it does with that second guess: ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ -> sloth ⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛ -> toils ⬛⬛⬛⬛🟨 -> spilt ⬛🟨⬛⬛🟨 -> rosit ⬛⬛⬛⬛🟩 -> toils ⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛ -> shout ⬛🟨🟨⬛⬛ -> party ⬛⬛⬛🟩⬛ -> gluts ⬛⬛⬛🟨🟨 -> lemon ⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛ -> pilot 🟨⬛⬛⬛⬛ -> kutis ⬛🟩⬛⬛⬛ -> pilot ⬛🟨🟨⬛🟨 -> patly ⬛⬛🟩⬛⬛ -> slipt ⬛⬛🟨⬛🟩 -> lambs ⬛⬛🟨🟨⬛ -> toils ⬛⬛🟨⬛🟨 -> tepal ⬛⬛🟩⬛

After 512 days, crane has finally won first try. Thank you

I could've never had forgiven my self had I not played Wordle today. Been using crane since this video came about.