Online Puzzles

[Politesse]

That $12 is a bit hot. But on the other hand, it does include doorstop delivery out here to the farting end of nowhere. There have to be a few chumps like me willing to overpay for the big municipal papers these days, or we just won't have them at all. God knows the Modesto Bee is not going to tell me what is going on in the wider region.

 

[Tharmas]

That $12 is a bit hot. But on the other hand, it does include doorstop delivery out here to the farting end of nowhere. There have to be a few chumps like me willing to overpay for the big municipal papers these days, or we just won't have them at all. God knows the Modesto Bee is not going to tell me what is going on in the wider region.

We're another couple of old-timers, or chumps if you will. We still subscribe to our local paper for daily and Sunday. Costs about $1200/year and comes with complementary digital subscription. The delivery person comes up the walkway and puts it on our doorstep. It's not as big as it used to be. They dropped the supplemental weekly magazine and the TV magazine costs extra. Sports scores from the previous night games are not reported. It definitely isn't "The Front Page" down at the news desk any more.

Our Sunday morning ritual also revolves around the NY Times crossword, which our paper prints a week late. When we were first dating, 35 years ago, we would call each other up Sunday mornings and work the puzzle together.

A note about the NY Times crosswords. After Will Shortz took over as editor the Sunday puzzle was changed. I won't say they dumbed it down, but they definitely made it somewhat less challenging. I say that even though last week's was a doozy. We filled in all the answers correctly but had to google to find out how it all worked, what the trick was.

Anyway, the weekday puzzles are graded. Monday is the easiest, Tuesday is a little more advanced, etc. Friday and Saturday are quite challenging. We save up Friday and Saturday puzzles to work after we've finished the Sunday.

 

[Politesse]

I feel like the NYT Crossword gets a bit carried away with gimmicks and puns, at times? I enjoy Mr Shortz' segments on NPR though. I do hope the public radio network survives the era somehow.

 

[Politesse]

I love how fortunes shift quickly on the Wordle. Today my first guess contained no correct letters at all, an unlucky start. But between my two first responses I'd taken enough options off the table that by row three there were only two possibilities, according to the wordle bot.

 

[Swammerdami]

I love how fortunes shift quickly on the Wordle. Today my first guess contained no correct letters at all, an unlucky start. But between my two first responses I'd taken enough options off the table that by row three there were only two possibilities, according to the wordle bot.

I think Wordle is almost identical to Positional Jotto, a popular game in my circle almost half a century ago. We also played (non-Positional) Jotto with only one number in a query response instead of two.

How do you cope with word sets like {CARES, BARES, DARES, EARES, FARES, HARES, LARES^*, MARES, NARES, OARES^*, PARES, RARES, TARES, VARES, WARES, YARES} ?

Does this lead to a long series of 4-scores, with the winning 5 not coming soon at all? (We sometimes solved this problem by scoring 4-4-4 or 4-4-4-4 as a winning 5.)

* - Sixteen different English 5-letter words with the _ARES pattern!?? A few of the words are rather uncommon but all are shown at Wiktionary and only LARES is marked "obsolete." (OARES is the non-obsolete plural of obsolete OARE )

A competitive game also based on forming 5-letter words but much more fun that Jotto is what we called "25 boxes", similar to a long-ago TV game.

 

[Politesse]

Lares is Latin, not English. The name of the creche in a Roman home where the family gods sit in state, or by connotation the family gods themselves.

The Wordle is clearly inspired by Jotto, but it gives a significant advantage to the player by telling after each guess whether a letter is found in the word (it turns gold) is not in the word (grey) or is already in the correct position (green). In this it follows the rules of an old TV show here in the US, Lingo. Every wordle is soluble in six guesses provided you are making efficient use of each guess and recognize the solution word. Partly because we only have six written vowels, and seven of our consonants are found in more than 5% of words. You do not get endless guesses, therefore, if you don't have it in six you've lost for the day. According to the App, I have played 171 games of Wordle and lost 11 of them.

The possible solutions are drawn from a dictionary of 2,309 "common words" a large set but smaller than what one would find in a dictionary. One more small kindness is that if the game does not recognize the word you submitted, it does not accept that guess, so you get no new information but are effectively given a do-over.

The case you suggest, with many equally possible solutions remaining with one letter left, is indeed alarming. One can rely on a few things, though. Previous guesses should already have either confirmed or eliminated T, L, N, C and H, the other common consonants, or your next guess should. I've never known a Wordle solution to be a simple plural either, so I would take quite a few of those guesses off the table. Actually all of them! This would be an unlikely scenario.

One has other tricks in the bag, though. Even without looking it up in the Wordle dictionary, I would further guess that it is unlikely to be Eares, Oares, or Pares, Tares, Vares, or Lares, as all are very uncommon words and probably aren't possible solutions. If on one's last guess, with too little information to help, you've already made your mistakes but go with whichever word is most often used and hope for the best.

 

[Politesse]

Tricky one, today....

 

[Swammerdami]

Lares is Latin, not English.

Surely you don't think a sequence of letters can be a word in only one language?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Lares#English (there is also an entry for the uncapitalized form)
Yes, the word derives from Latin. But 'restaurant' is a French word. -- Do you think that means it is not also an English word?

The Wordle is clearly inspired by Jotto, but it gives a significant advantage to the player by telling after each guess whether a letter is found in the word (it turns gold) is not in the word (grey) or is already in the correct position (green).

I assume you get a response along the lines of 2 gold, 1 green. Or are you told WHICH letter the gold/green applies to? If so, this is NOT Jotto.
If not, and as I already said, this is what we called Positional Jotto.

In this it follows the rules of an old TV show here in the US

As I said the 25 Boxes game was also loosely related to a different TV game show. It can be played with 2, 3 or more players. A friend and I often played 2-handed. It is a SPLENDID competitive game, also played with an official list of 5-letter words. Unfortunately it's too tedious to play on-line rather than in person: More than 25 messages would be needed. (Though an App could be designed making it even better than the in-person game.)

The possible solutions are drawn from a dictionary of 2,309 "common words" a large set but smaller than what one would find in a dictionary

Yes, the 16 _ARES words I showed from Wiktionary include only about 10 (or 11 with 'nares') words from that subset.

 

[Politesse]

Surely you don't think a sequence of letters can be a word in only one language?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Lares#English (there is also an entry for the uncapitalized form)
Yes, the word derives from Latin. But 'restaurant' is a French word. -- Do you think that means it is not also an English word?

I don't, but Sam Ezersky usually does. It's best, with all NYT word puzzles, to think "Does the average middle class New Yorker know this word?" The Spelling Bee, which uses the same word list, often drives me crazy for all the scientific or cultural language it does not know.

I assume you get a response along the lines of 2 gold, 1 green. Or are you told WHICH letter the gold/green applies to?

Exactly so. Wordle was inspired by Jotto in its many incarnations, but it is not Jotto.

 

[Swammerdami]

Yes, the word derives from Latin. But 'restaurant' is a French word. -- Do you think that means it is not also an English word?

I don't, but Sam Ezersky usually does.

Sam Ezersky thinks 'restaurant' is not an English word?

I assume you get a response along the lines of 2 gold, 1 green. Or are you told WHICH letter the gold/green applies to?

Exactly so. Wordle was inspired by Jotto in its many incarnations, but it is not Jotto.

Paraphrasing, I asked "Is it the case that A? OR is it the case that B?
And you answered 'Yes.'

I may seem to be nitpicking -- and I DO think you and Sam both know that 'restaurant' is an English word -- but I honestly DO NOT KNOW which of the TWO options you are answering 'Exactly so' to.

I'd be grateful if you would occasionally proof-read your posts for CLARITY. As is, they are sadly lacking.

 

[Politesse]

July 4th's puzzle looked like so, for instance:



A much more relaxing endeavor, generally speaking, than any game of Jotto.

 

[Politesse]

Yes, the word derives from Latin. But 'restaurant' is a French word. -- Do you think that means it is not also an English word?

I don't, but Sam Ezersky usually does.

Sam Ezersky thinks 'restaurant' is not an English word?

I assume you get a response along the lines of 2 gold, 1 green. Or are you told WHICH letter the gold/green applies to?

Exactly so. Wordle was inspired by Jotto in its many incarnations, but it is not Jotto.

Paraphrasing, I asked "Is it the case that A? OR is it the case that B?
And you answered 'Yes.'

I may seem to be nitpicking -- and I DO think you and Sam both know that 'restaurant' is an English word -- but I honestly DO NOT KNOW which of the TWO options you are answering 'Exactly so' to.

I'd be grateful if you would occasionally proof-read your posts for CLARITY. As is, they are sadly lacking.

Have I offended you somehow?

 

[bilby]

Paraphrasing, I asked "Is it the case that A? OR is it the case that B?
And you answered 'Yes.'

An answer that has the benefit that it is certain to be correct, if A or B is a genuine dichotomy, or even if A or B is not a dichotomy, if at least one of A or B is true (or if exactly one of A or B is true if your OR is an exclusive OR).

Indeed, "Yes" is highly unlikely to be a wrong answer to such a question (albeit it is also highly unlikely to be a helpful answer to such a question).

 

[GenesisNemesis]

I like Waffle. https://wafflegame.net/daily

Redactle is neat too https://redactle.anybrowser.org/ but more difficult. Haven't solved a lot of those.

 

[Elixir]

I love how fortunes shift quickly on the Wordle. Today my first guess contained no correct letters at all, an unlucky start. But between my two first responses I'd taken enough options off the table that by row three there were only two possibilities, according to the wordle bot.

I played that often and have twice gotten it on the first guess! I often take the opposite approach to guessing common letters first, and instead try to eliminate letters on the first two guesses, using words like "cough" or "waxed" instead of "later" - sometimes you get lucky! More often, one or more of the less common letters shows up as included and gives it away. If not, it can take five or six guesses. I stopped liking wordle a lot because they started using so many duplicate letters, with words like "daddy".
Now the only one I do regularly is NERDLE.

 

[Politesse]

The Wordle I can say little of without shame, but today's Spelling Bee is off to a promising start:

 

[Politesse]

I am smarter than the entire country today:

 

[Swammerdami]

I started playing Wordle recently and am proud of my results.


I guess you'll need to take my word that these are my "undoctored" results, despite that doctoring would be fairly easy (see 2nd image).
I've had much poorer results with Connections and may just give up on that. Yesterday when one group was 4 Las Vegas casinos I'd never heard of three of them, but got all four by chance on my very first guess thinking of things with pointed tips!

 

[Swammerdami]

If you're looking for puzzles based on combinatorics rather than words, that require less imagination than Connections, but are more of a challenge than Wordle, Try Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Connection.

As you see on that home page he offers no less than 40 different puzzle types. At least five are very well known (Mines, Black Box, Guess; he calls Sudoku 'Solo'), and I've only tried a half-dozen or so of the remaining. Most of the puzzles offer difficulty (or board size) levels ranging from Easy to Very Difficult. Among the ones I enjoy are Untangle and Towers. At first glance Untangle looks very difficult, but I start by just rapidly moving dots to shorten lines; then guessing which dots would make a nice perimeter. Solution is then often easy.

I recently started playing Range. I find the 12×8 board very challenging; they give a pleasant sense of accomplishment when solved! 16×11 sounds preposterous but I dunno: Maybe the large boards somehow get easier. After much effort I finally completed this very challenging 12×8 Range. I'm linking to it here in celebration!

 

[Swammerdami]

I recently started playing Range. I find the 12×8 board very challenging; they give a pleasant sense of accomplishment when solved! 16×11 sounds preposterous but I dunno: Maybe the large boards somehow get easier. After much effort I finally completed this very challenging 12×8 Range. I'm linking to it here in celebration!

The very next Range I tried also seems difficult. I will watch some TV, go to sleep, and try again tomorrow. Here's your chance to solve it before I do!