Post #1957587
2026-04-30 22:31 UTC
Choosing one of those words that I'm familiar with (DUTCH) and checking the output caused me to notice something.
⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ slate
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 point
⬜⬜🟨🟨🟩 mouth
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 cutch
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 kutch
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 butch
After MOUTH it's got a set of _UTCH words. Normally when the remaining possibilities differ in one letter position, you want to find a word that is a legal guess and contains as many of those letters as possible, even if it can't be a valid guess.
Instead it's iterating through each possibility, which is how you run out of turns.
Replies (1)
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@cliffle@hachyderm.io 2026-04-30 22:33
Turns out, an "endgame" heuristic I had put into place was misfiring and causing the solver to avoid potentially-impossible choices (when I had intended it to only avoid them in the last guess). Fixed: ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ slate → 271 left ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 point → 15 left ⬜⬜🟨🟨🟩 mouth → 5 left 🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨 caked → 1 left 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 dutch (CAKED in guess 4 is not a possible solution to the puzzle, which was shown in guess 1 to not contain A or E. But, it precisely disambiguates between the 5 possible remaining choices.) The overall solve rate is now 99.6%, missing only: baker bezel biddy boxer dolly ferry roger rower taffy