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    Solving Wordle using information theory

    3Blue1Brown

    2 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2022–2024

    YouTube

    30:38 · 12M views · Feb 6, 2022

    3Blue1Brown uses Wordle as an excuse to teach information theory and entropy, building a solver that picks guesses by expected information and incorporating word frequencies.

    HN recommends it as the go-to explanation of optimal Wordle openers like CRANE and a friendly introduction to information theory, also relevant to Mastermind.

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    5 comments from Hacker News

    1. @bnycumAug 2023· in “Mastermind Solver”

      Reminds me of the 3Blue1Brown video about Wordle, and then it's followup video. I guess that's kind of a spoiler, but still worth a watch. this video [LINK]

      RecommendsView on HN
    2. @dowakinFeb 2022· in “Play Wordle from Your Terminal”

      If you wonder why in the demo author uses `crane` as first guess - check out recent video from 3Blue1Brown this video

      RecommendsView on HN
    3. @sargstuffApr 2022· in “Λ-2D: Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language, Ideas from Lambda Calculus”

      Warning: Bit of a 'Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy"/conway game of life yak shave for a reply. Nice start to providing a simple way to visually interact/experiment/manipulate different multiple Neural network concepts by loading/transforming any traditional code (working or not) & reshuffling/tesselating the structual representation of the code to generate a turing tape path via color execution paths. Switching to pi calculus could provide the theory to support coroutine/coprossing/ threading" multiple interacting tape paths/color combinations/path diffs/scaled recusion to perform assembly language instructions. Raster graphics without the yak ( [LINK] ) Feed back between tape & "traditional code" as neural network layer(s)! Flexiable code (via tessilations) without changing the actual imported source code! So, complete svg (tape interactions) web page as code source on how to interact with web page, ( [LINK] ) what's displayed/played, documentation & usage manual included within code structure! Unicode permits implied piping rich kern font without all the tech fluff. Unicode fails because allows infinate multics and is there for k&r incomplete. But, this approach is way more dimensional/colorful than unicode/tech stuff. ?? can one's code unintentially provide a wordle problem & solution in one package ?? ( this video ) ?? turing complete fourier transforms [LINK] toolkit concepts: Neural networks / analog stuff : [LINK] perceptrons: [LINK] spreadsheets (: [LINK] (turing spread

      CitesView on HN
    4. @pstuartDec 2023· in “Seven Things We Learned Analyzing 515M Wordles”

      Interesting that SLATE is the apparent optimum opener. I found a youtube that "showed" that CRANE is mathematically optimal: this video The second guess (if a low hit count) fleshes out the remaining vowels. My average is 4, followed by 3.

      CitesView on HN
    5. @bschneJan 2024· in “How to solve the "Mastermind" guessing game? (2009)”

      ICYMI, 3blue1brown (Grant Sanderson) has a video applying information theory to solving Wordle, which is conceptually similar to mastermind -- this video

      CitesView on HN