GoKawiilA team of researchers at Binghamton University has developed a method to solve Wordle, which is currently celebrating its fifth anniversary. Image Credit: Binghamton University, State University of New York.
S-M-A-R-T! These researchers used math to crack Wordle Engineers use information theory to solve New York Times puzzle with 99% success rate
Every day, millions of people play Wordle, the popular New York Times game that challenges users to guess a secret five-letter word. Using information theory, a team of researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York, has developed a method to solve the game with a 99% success rate.
In Wordle, players attempt to solve a five-letter word within six guesses. At the start, players are presented with five blank spaces to play any letter of their choosing, with zero hints offered. When a player guesses a word – say “BRAVE” – the game provides feedback in the form of color highlights.
Grey indicates that a guessed letter is not part of the secret word
Yellow indicates that a guessed letter is part of the secret word but is not in the correct order
Green indicates the guessed letter is part of the secret word and in the correct order
The player keeps guessing and is presented with clues until they guess the correct word and all five squares turn green – or they run out of guesses and lose the game.
Cracking the code
The research team, led by Assistant Professor Congyu “Peter” Wu, applied Shannon entropy – a mathematical measure of uncertainty – to determine which guesses provide the most information. Rather than focusing solely on guessing the most likely answer from the get-go, their method prioritizes guessing words that provide as much information as possible to reduce the pool of possible words.
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