Re:Show HN: Wordle-style game for Fermi questions
by danielfetz on Saturday August 02, 2025 @02:42PM
(#44770193)
The UX change you propose would be quite an improvement and it is unfortunate that I haven't considered that myself. I'll implement that in the next few days.
Re:Show HN: Wordle-style game for Fermi questions
by danielfetz on Wednesday August 06, 2025 @01:19PM
(#44814851)
I think I found a solution to bring the focus a bit away from the binary search and would greatly appreciate feedback from you.
The game now shows a hint after the second incorrect guess. For example the hint "The US covers 1.87% of the Earth's surface." is displayed for the question about what percentage of the Earth's surface is land.
How does the new information received through the hint impact your guess and assumptions?
Re:Show HN: Wordle-style game for Fermi questions
by hebejebelus on Saturday August 09, 2025 @03:56AM
(#44844819)
Yeah, that's a great idea. I think perhaps after the fourth guess you could also show the guess direction arrows, so the user can know if they're in the ballpark and they won't get too frustrated? But it's hard to keep the simplicity of a wordle-style game!
This is especially the case when the question is asking for a bounded number in the first place (eg a percentage). In fact I'm pretty certain you should _always_ succeed within 4 steps given +-10 on a percentage question and nearly always within 3 steps. ChatGPT says it's provably so but I'm not smart enough to verify. Rings true though.
Certainly made easier by knowing whether it's higher or lower, and especially with the yellow arrows if you're not too far off.
One UX change that might be nice is to have a "spoken" version of your guess live-update below the input. I keep having to count zeroes and it would be nicer to see "Eleven billion".