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Solving Wordle using information theory

43 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2022–2024 score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

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.

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.

“still worth a watch.” (HN, 2023)

2 recommendations · 3 citations · Explainers · intermediate

5 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@dowakin Feb 2022 Recommends
on HN thread 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]
Explains optimal Wordle opening guesses like crane via information theory.
@bnycum Aug 2023 Recommends
on HN thread 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]
Information-theory approach to Wordle, with a followup video.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@sargstuff Apr 2022 Cites it
on HN thread Λ-2D: Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language, Ideas from Lambda Calculus
Read more
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
Tangential Wordle reference in a rambling comment.
@pstuart Dec 2023 Cites it
on HN thread 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.
Argues for CRANE as the optimal opener.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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