Show HN: Can you lose at Wordle if you tried?
Hello! I am the creator of Don’t Wordle. Really excited to see this took off today.<p>I thought I would share some background about the game, some of the iterations I went through, and some of the future features I would like to add.<p>Background:
Like many others, I have been playing Wordle daily. Recently, my Wordle win streak hit 99. I was admittedly very careful with my guesses on Day 100, not wanting to ruin my streak. Then I began to wonder…even if I wanted to lose intentionally, could I do it? Obviously, I could make intentionally bad guesses, but that would take the fun out of it. So I decided to build Don’t Wordle.<p>Iterations I have gone through:<p>The first version of the game was simpler and much worse IMO. I did not display the “Valid Words Remaining” at the top, and there was no concept of “Undos". Initially, I actually displayed the Wordle word at the top throughout the entire game! To be honest, that doesn’t change the difficulty of the game that much. However, given that the spirit of the game is not to guess the Wordle word, it seemed like the right decision to hide it.<p>I created the “Valid Words Remaining” feature when I realized how challenging the game was. I kept getting stuck and wondering whether there were even any words left besides to Wordle word. When I saw how fast the count shrinks, I felt the game was a lot more interesting.<p>I then added the concept of “Undos” when I realized the game was still too challenging. It’s particulary lame if you’re playing the game for the first time and you get eliminated after just 1 or 2 guesses.<p>Current Tech Stack:<p>-Route53 + Cloudfront + S3 + Create React App<p>Unexpected challenges:<p>1. The animations. I obviously copied all the concepts from the original Wordle, but I failed to appreciate the complexity.<p>2. The nuances of the repeat letter words.<p>3. What makes a Wordle square yellow? The answer is not so simple<p>4. Trying to get www.dontwordle.com and dontwordle.com to take you to the same URL (either www.dontwordle.com or dontwordle.com) and still support TLS and only use the tech I mentioned above. I actually still don’t have it working perfectly. I know of a solution, but it’s overly complicated<p>Features I would like to still add:<p>1. I have heard from multiple people that it’s annoying how you could get the game in an unwinnable state without realizing it. For example, maybe 20 valid words remain, but there is no valid sequence of words remaining to finish the puzzle. While the “Valid Words Remaining” feature is nice, it would also be cool to have a “Valid Solutions Remaining” feature<p>2. I would like to build a brute force solver that you can watch attempt to play the game in real-time. I have built something similar for a crossword puzzle and really enjoyed watching the computer try to fill the grid. I think it would be cool to do that same thing with this game.<p>Question I don’t yet know the answer to:<p>Do any words exist that would not have a single valid solution in this game?