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A comment on Show HN: Purple Word – A new word puzzle game. Parent comment

Re:Show HN: Purple Word – A new word puzzle game by WCSTombs on Friday February 06, 2026 @05:25AM (#46911161)
How are you getting the 170,000 number? I did a quick search and found this quote from merriam-webster.com [1]:

> Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, together with its 1993 Addenda Section, includes some 470,000 entries. The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, reports that it includes a similar number.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq-how-many-english-wo...

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Re:Show HN: Purple Word – A new word puzzle game by almara on Friday February 06, 2026 @05:31AM (#46911205)
Interesting.

The word list / dictionary provided by the site only had around 170k lines so it must not be a complete version.

I would guess they have excluded some obscure words. I can't see anywhere in the information which dictionary is used.

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Re:Show HN: Purple Word – A new word puzzle game by almara on Friday February 06, 2026 @05:34AM (#46911227)
Actually on a second look the wordlist has 279,498 words. I think it was only partially loaded when I first checked.

That bumps the math to log₂(279,498) ≈ 18.1, so 19 guesses in the worst case and about 18 on average with perfect play

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