After completing this morning’s Wordle I found myself drawn to a “New!” link advertising WordleBot, a smart-sounding addition to The New York Times app which promised to analyse my puzzle solution and compare it with others. (I got today’s word in six, for which I’m still feeling a little shameful.)
Scrolling through its results I was impressed – not only does WordleBot show how other players began today’s game and then narrowed down the solution over subsequent guesses, it also shows how WordleBot itself, programmed with a set of rules and likelihoods, fared too. (WordleBot only got today’s word after five guesses, which immediately made me feel a little better.)
This was my first experience of WordleBot, a program I now understand has existed for some time online, but has only this week been added to the New York Times puzzle app – where I play a set routine of Wordle, the Mini Crossword and then (if I’m not running too late by this point) Connections as well.
Writing back in 2022, The New York Times described its work-in-progress Wordlebot as “the tool that sometimes uplifts you when you think your Wordle performance has been terrible, and sometimes chides you when you think you’ve played superbly”. And after a pretty poor six-guess run today, I do feel a little better.