So the fun word game stops working while commuting by train because it needs to stop me "cheating" in a purely fun /social game by phoning home during the time I have to play it, where the connection is spotty at best, and the quick game loop of guess, read result, think gets janked because of railway cuttings and tunnels?
All because someone coukd read the source to cheat and wouldn't, idk, just copy paste the squares about in their tweets?
Exactly. It's somewhat baffling to me how some people focus so much on the technology aspects of something to the point of forgetting that its success is due to the things that it does not do.
For context, a Twitter bot was recently banned for automatically replying to Wordle tweets and spoiling the next day's word. Preventing that would improve the gameplay experience by defending against malicious disruption.
Not really. The bot can get its data from when NZ hits midnight, hours and hours before America and Europe etc. Even if it was always released at the exact same time globally, nothing to stop a bot solving it / fetching it immediately and replying to users posts from yesterday about what todays one is.
I don't see a point of this. I could probably find the correct word for today by Googling so server/client side does not make any difference if we all share the same word for the day which is I think the major feature behind the success.
> You can feel any way you want about NYT, but you’d argue that “multiple word length” options wouldn’t make the game better for some? Or hybridizing it with the crossword?
Anything that takes away from everyone getting the same word on the same day will absolutely nuke its popularity. There's really nothing novel about the game to make it popular other than that. Don't get me wrong, it's fun and well implemented, but the concept existed before Wordle. What makes Wordle successful is how dirt-simple it is to share your results on any medium.
There is/was a Dutch TV show called Lingo that is based on the same game and I'd expect there to be more such shows.
Only variations the TV show has is the 6 word version on Saturday and some comedians made a sketch with a 19 letter version: words like "Marshallplanachtige" [0]
EDIT: of course there's also this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7qxpAUKy4c in which some dude tries to not say a word he probably saw in a porno but does have to say it of course so mispronounces.
Not really true as it is, being based on local time. For example, there's only a one hour period each day where someone in New Zealand and someone in Hawaii have the same word.
Fortunatly Wordle clearly signals it with a countdown timer, instead of leaving it up to the reader to figure out what "day" they mean like other daily puzzle sites or people on the internet in general.
I would never have found the game (and played it) without those results being shared. Anecdata, sure, and correlation != causation an all that, but I have to agree.
Have you considered your impulse to make everything bigger, better, more efficient, more configurable, more profitable, etc is actually the “small minded” one in this day and age?
What else is there? People don't enjoy the game because of logic and reason, they enjoy it because of emotion: it's fun, you get a feeling of accomplishment when you win, when you lose, you feel driven to do better tomorrow, etc.
It's all very very simple, and that's what's great about it.
Please stop with the "that's anti-hacker" rhetoric. That's the kind of talk designed to shut down discussion. I think it's only natural to be cynical of a big corporation like NYT buying up a small one-person creation. Wordle is great as it is. Maybe there are ways to improve it, but I doubt NYT can do anything the original developer can do, at least not without completely changing the game into something it's not.
>There is objectively nothing that NYT could add to the game to make it more interesting. It can only make it worse.
What discussion did THAT open?
EDIT: And I'm glad you're expressing opinions! That's the point of discourse. GP was doing something different and just because you agree with GP's opinion doesn't mean that his rhetorical choices are sound!
Fair, an absolutist statement like that is pretty silly and obviously false. And whether any particular change makes a game better or worse is inherently subjective; "objectively nothing" is false by definition.
There are already a gazillion variations of the game out there. Any kid can take the core idea and make an open source version with all these configurations. Actually it has already been done, just look for the "evil wordle" version that was some "show HN".
My point is that, while is nice for the original creator that he could find someone to give that much money for the game, this valuation is only based on how much rent the NYT might be able to extract from it, not from the value of the creation itself. And that tells me that as an user I have nothing to benefit from this acquisition.
> But what’s your evidence for “NYT is into seeking rent”?
Aside from the eyeballs, please tell me what value is there in the wordle property to justify buying it for millions of dollars?
If the game itself was using interesting closed technology or had any other kind of intellectual property attached to it, then maybe it could be justified. But nobody spends that amount of money if they are not looking for ways to make it back manifold.
If the product already has millions of users who need no training or coaching to get using it, the "Good UX" is already there.
> Are you implying that NYT should have just copied it, rather than rewarding the creator?
I am not implying anything. I am stating that the only thing that the NYT (or anyone else really) would be interested in buying from wordle is the user base, they made an investment and they will look for ways to get their money back.
Everything else is easy to replicate. It's hard to think of a way where they can get their money back that doesn't destroy or puts a limit on the things that make it so appealing to people.
If you think that any corporation has any interest of giving away millions of dollars to someone as "reward", I have a bridge to sell you.
They do so much stupid stuff in the crossword (REBUS, missing letters, un-ordered phrases) that they can make a mess of anything. I HOPE they'll keep it as it is but just charge for past Wordles. That's the only improvement they could make.
They do so much stupid stuff in the crossword (REBUS, missing letters, un-ordered phrases)
Those are the meta game puzzles which generally happen on Wed or Thu. They can be frustrating, but the “aha!” moment, when you discover what’s going on, is the point. Those puzzles are the ones that set NYT crosswords as the gold standard and show off the creativity of the puzzle makers. Of course YMMV.
If you think "multiple word length" would enhance the game, you haven't thought for very long about what makes the game work. It basically has to be 5 letters or the entire structure falls apart.
As for Craigslist, I suspect there's not "a reason". I imagine it's a lot of different, complex reasons.
While I'm not absolute on the notion that 5 letters is perfect, I found the current game lives on quite a precarious balance; There is a Japanese version with around 65 possible letters, and the secret word being 4 letters, but this turns out to be significantly harder, with the game rules adjusted accordingly to allow up to 12 tries. Despite being able to play it in my mother tongue, I found it less fun. Tweaking the formula (even in English) will likely require lot of thought into re-balancing.
5 letters gives enough options without requiring the player to have access to a lot of guesses to have any hope of winning, and gives the game a short playtime.
It's built to be quick to play. You can play it on a commute, or dip in a few times throughout the day.
You wouldn't have that progress visible to players with a larger problem space. Tangentially, you'd also wind up having to lean more on "technical" (as in scoped to a particular domain, not technological) language in order to fill the list. That limits access to those outside of that field of study.
Why?
There is objectively nothing that NYT could add to the game to make it more interesting. It can only make it worse.