This is a simple Wordle solver written in Julia. For an in-depth analysis and discussion of the findings, please see the accompanying blog post.

Description of files

Word lists

• solutions.txt is the set of words that might appear as solutions to the puzzle. This list contains 2315 words.
• nonsolutions.txt is the set of additional words that can be used as guesses but will never appear as solutions. Contains 10657 words.
• solutions_nyt.txt is the updated list of solution words (the list changed after Wordle was acquired by the New York Times). The updated list contains 2309 words.
• nonsolutions_nyt.txt is the updated list of additional words that can be used as guesses but will never appear as solutions. Contains 10638 words.

Scripts

• utils.jl contains all the helper functions.
• work.jl is a script that determines whether a given start word admits a strategy guaranteed to always win in 4 moves or fewer. Takes about 25 minutes to run for each word. This script was run in parallel on a multi-core machine to show that no 4-move strategy exists for Wordle.

Notebooks

• wordle_solver.ipynb is an interactive solver. You can specify your guess words and the responses, and compute optimal next moves based on several different greedy heuristics.
• performance.ipynb creates several figures (saved in the [figures] subfolder) that analyze the performance of different heuristics. Also generates the other figures used in the blog post.
• hard_mode_exhaustive_search.ipynb performs an exhaustive search of all hard-mode strategies and finds one that is guaranteed to solve in 5 moves or fewer using only common words.

Strategies

• hard_mode_strategy.md contains the full strategy found using the hard mode exhaustive search mentioned above, starting with the word SCAMP.