doddle 0.0.4

doddle: Make Wordle A Doddle

Features

• Run the solver to see how the game is optimally played
• Solve a game in realtime using Doddle's solver
• Play a variation of the game where the solver attempts to hide the answer from you for as long as possible (inspired by Absurdle)
• Play using words of length 4-9 (inclusive) by adding the optional --size argument (default is 5).
• Choose your solver using the --solver=ENTROPY --solver=MINIMAX argument (default is minimax)
• Run deep searches using the depth argument (default is 1)
• Doddle can solve multiple games of Wordle at the same time. This mode is inspired by popular spin-offs such as Dordle, Quordle and Octordle. Playing multiple games with Doddle is easy: just add more solutions to the run doddle run --answer=ULTRA,QUICK,SOLVE and Doddle will solve them all at the same time.

Install

pip install doddle

Commands

Run

doddle run --answer=SALTY
doddle run --answer=SPEED --guess=SOLVE
doddle run --answer=FABULOUS --guess=SOLUTION --solver=ENTROPY
doddle run --answer=DEEP --guess=MIND --solver=ENTROPY --depth=2

Run a simulation with an answer of your choosing to see how Doddle solves the problem. You can optionally provide your own starting guess to see how the game plays out. With every guess, Doddle acquires more information and prunes the list of possible solutions. The output (far right column) shows you how many possible solutions still exist at each step of the solve.

Doddle provides multiple ways to solve the game. You can choose between a minimax solver (the default), or an entropy reduction approach. An entropy based approach optimises for best average play; a minimax approach tries to avoid worst-case scenarios and never goes above 5 moves.

Doddle supports deep searches for all of its solvers 🧠🧠🧠. These are slower, more exhaustive searches for those that want to go deeper. By default, Doddle plays the move that will yield the 'best' outcome on its next turn. In the case of minimax, that means playing the move that will result in the fewest number of possible words to search in the worst-case scenario (it choose a word that minimises the outcome that provides maximum uncertainty). In the case of --solver=ENTROPY, it plays the move that results in the greatest expected reduction in Shannon entropy. With deep searches, it thinks n steps ahead. So for --depth=2, the minimax solver plays the word that minimses the number of possible solutions in the worst case scenario on the turn after next taking into consideration all sensible first moves. The performance is still decent - a few seconds per game - but it is noticably slower as the search space explodes exponentially with depth.

Solve

doddle solve
doddle solve --size=7
doddle solve --guess=RAISE
doddle solve --guess=MIND --solver=ENTROPY
doddle solve --guess=MIND --solver=MINIMAX --depth=2

Work smarter not harder. Use Doddle's solver to solve Wordle as fast as possible. If you're playing Wordle and need some... ahem... divine inspiration, fire up Doddle's solver. Doddle will give you the optimal word to use. Type the response back into Wordle to generate the next guess. Doddle represents answers as ternary numbers! Doddle uses 2 for exact matches, 1 for partial matches and 0 for unmatched letters (e.g. 10202).

>>> doddle solve --guess=TORCH
Enter score for TORCH:
>>> 10000

The best guess is SNAIL
Enter score for SNAIL:
>>> 20101

The best guess is SALTY
Enter score for SALTY:
>>> 22222

Great success! ✨ 🔮 ✨

Half way through a game and just want to know the next best move? Doddle's got you covered. With solve, you're not forced to play the move Doddle suggests. Doddle accepts two syntaxes when entering a score: 1) just a score (as above e.g. 20101); or 2) a WORD=SCORE pair (SNAKE=20100). If you're half way through and need the best move, fill in what you've done so far using the second input method and let Doddle take over from there.

The best guess is SNAIL
Enter score for SNAIL:
>>> SNAKE=20100

The best guess is SALTY
...

Hide

doddle hide --guess=SALTY

Hide is a spin on the conventional Wordle game. Here, Doddle uses its solver to hide the final answer for as long as possible. Doddle doesn't choose an answer before the game starts - instead it always presents you with the score that results in maximum ambiguity. You'll get there in the end, but the game might take a while. 😈

Similar to the original Wordle game, a keyboard is rendered to display what characters have been guessed so far.

Algorithm

Doddle offers two choices of algorithms for solving Wordle: Minimax and Entropy.

Minimax

By default, Doddle uses a minimax algorithm to solve the game. The idea behind minimax is to minimise the worst case scenario for each word.

For instance, suppose you have narrowed the game down to one of four possibilties: SKILL, SPILL, SWILL, STILL. Now let's suppose you play the naïve guess of SKILL. In the best case scenario, the match is won (🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩) but, in the worst case, you still have three words left to search through (🟩🟨🟩🟩🟩). Minimax works by considering all possible words as guesses and choosing the one the minimises the uncertainty in the worst case scenario. A word like KEMPT, for instance, would return scores of 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜, ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜, ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜, ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 for SKILL, SPILL, SWILL and STILL respectively. Because each result partitions the words into their own bucket, the maximum uncertainty is one and the game can be immediately won on the next move. In doing so, we have minimised the maximmaly bad outcome.

Entropy

As an alternative to minimax, it is possible to play the game using an entropy solver. Here, the solver always chooses the word that, on average, lowers the Shannon entropy of the game. More documentation on this algorithm coming soon!

Simultaneous Play

Documentation on playing mutliple games at once coming soon!

Coming soon

• An explain feature to show what the solver is thinking
• A facade layer - for those who want to call a simple API in their code
• Best pair mode - Find the best pair of moves for those who like to take it easy
• Rate my guess - see how your guess compares against the optimal move
• Proper setup of CI/CD and containerisation to check deployment on UNIX based systems
• More algorithms for solving (DNNs or RL)
• Documentation
• More views! For snazzy reporting. e.g.:

Wordle 242 3/6

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