Researchers used math to crack Wordle

Re:Researchers used math to crack Wordle by boothby on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @12:00PM (#48647088)

I crushed wordle within a few days of its popularity entering my sphere. It was pretty easy to brute-force a decision tree minimizing the average number of guesses using a lowly python script and a few days of qpu time.

Don't Wordle[1] is significantly more interesting; I've got a solver but the maximum score takes my lowly python script upwards of a day (per day) to solve using brute force. For now, I solve it with a heuristic that terminates in about 20 minutes. My old wordle solver was useful to find a good but suboptimal tree for identifying the answer in 5 undos or less.

Today:

  Don't Wordle 1491 - SURVIVED
  Hooray! I didn't Wordle today!
  ..... 8089
  ..... 4647
  ..... 2492
  ..... 1026
  .Y... 231
  ..G.. 100
  Undos used: 3

    100 words remaining
  x 10 unused letters
  = 1000 total score

My puzzle ethics are: you can and should download the dictionaries of valid answers and valid guesses, you're allowed to keep them separate, but you must not keep the list of answers in its original order.

[1] https://dontwordle.com/

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Re:Researchers used math to crack Wordle by cvoss on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @12:15PM (#48647295)

Another great variant is Unfair Wordle [1]. The opponent does not fix the answer upfront but instead evades the player's guesses as long as possible, providing you with the least information it legally can give (according to the usual rules) while still preserving a valid game completion path. The result is that your guesses end up looking extremely unlucky in retrospect.

[1] https://tweakimp.github.io/unfairwordle/

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Re:Researchers used math to crack Wordle by arcastroe on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @12:26PM (#48647432)

Woah. I was surprised to win on the first try: cramp, ghost, blind, bulky, bevel, bezel

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Re:Researchers used math to crack Wordle by cvoss on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @12:47PM (#48647726)

Nice! I'm not actually sure what its mechanism is for providing the "least information". It could be smart and reply in a way that maximizes the number of remaining consistent answers. Or it could be greedy and try to report as many "grays" as possible, then as many "yellows" as possible, then resorting to "greens". The latter seems more likely to me, since its easier to implement.

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Re:Researchers used math to crack Wordle by BoppreH on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @01:17PM (#48648158)

I also found it surprisingly easy, starting from my triple "olden, party, music" (calculated years ago for state space coverage and memorability). Followed by "fight", then either "shark, brash" or "brash, shark".

Maybe it's harder if you're a careful player that doesn't waste the first three words.

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Re:Researchers used math to crack Wordle by cvoss on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @01:32PM (#48648390)

Yeah, it's definitely more challenging and fun on a self-imposed "hard mode" where you must employ the information that is revealed.

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Re:Researchers used math to crack Wordle by madcaptenor on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @03:21PM (#48650008)

see also "absurdle": https://qntm.org/files/absurdle/absurdle.html

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Re:Researchers used math to crack Wordle by headz on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @01:14PM (#48648122)

I "crushed it" when it came out with Right click -> View source -> Find the list of words. All the future words were in the code already.

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Re:Researchers used math to crack Wordle by boothby on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @02:05PM (#48648857)

This is why I explicitly mentioned that in my puzzle ethics. I reject that as a valid solve.

(And amusingly I said "qpu time" when I meant CPU)

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Re:Researchers used math to crack Wordle by bre1010 on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @01:20PM (#48648207)

I also noticed this. I was working on my solver but my dictionary kept suggesting options that wordle didn't consider to be words at all (what the heck is usr/share/dict/words anyway??). So I looked through the source for the dictionary wordle is using and then also found the list of all solutions which really took the fun out of that whole exercise :(

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Re:Researchers used math to crack Wordle by NooneAtAll3 on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @03:04PM (#48649782)

what's qpu?

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Re:Researchers used math to crack Wordle by boothby on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @06:35PM (#48652451)

That's a typo, I meant CPU! I work with quantum computers, where we do discuss QPU (quantum processing unit) time, but that's not how I did this.

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