Lirdle - Like Wordle, but with one lie per answer

February 23, 2023 7:01 AM

Lirdle - Like Wordle, but with one lie per answer [via mefi projects]
posted by curious nu (51 comments total)

Lirdle game #1754
Solved in 6 tries.

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I'm wondering if six is enough usually.
Fun.

I've been working on a Wordle solver for 2 months (and I am not a programmer).
I think I finally got the bugs out. (I know, ha,ha)
Those duplicate letters really are a challenge, and I haven't found a good way to play easy mode.
posted by MtDewd at 7:15 AM on February 23, 2023

🅂🄰🄽🅃🄾🅂
posted by zamboni at 7:25 AM on February 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

i'm calling the police
posted by mittens at 7:26 AM on February 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

I like this, but without a dark mode it won't be taking its deserved seat on the how-to-make-polytope-fall-asleep-at-night council.

Lirdle game #1754

Solved in 6 tries.

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posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 7:37 AM on February 23, 2023

It does let you keep going past 6--I got it in 9. I love it and never want to see it again.
posted by miles per flower at 7:40 AM on February 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

Okay so it's only false positives as lies. It can't lie by saying you didn't get a letter that you did get.

I don't have a large sample, but I think it tries to repeat a lie until it's forced to admit that it's false? Like, in my first guess I got a green lie, and in my second guess I repeated no letters and got a yellow lie, and in my third guess I combined all my allegedly good letters from the first two guesses, so it could no longer lie about both, so it dropped the green lie and repeated the yellow lie.
posted by RobotHero at 7:41 AM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Okay so it's only false positives as lies. It can't lie by saying you didn't get a letter that you did get.

No, I definitely got some letters marked grey that were in the eventual solution.
posted by solotoro at 8:10 AM on February 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

At first I thought that I was the one lying to the computer, and wasn't sure how to leverage that. "I typed in CRATE, but my real guess was CRANE" ?

Also got it in 6, with extensive use of Wordle Helper. It's a fun choice to have the lie location different for each player!

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posted by What is E. T. short for? at 8:17 AM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

It took me 11. My brain cannot compute figuring out a lie. I've gotten quite good at Wordle, and I think it was a bit of a struggle at first, but this just wasn't fun, and I don't think I want to do it again. I wanted it to end, and it just kept giving me more lines! I was struggling to just come up with a word to put in there.

... back to Wordle and quordle for me!
posted by hydra77 at 9:42 AM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Okay, I guess it was luck of the draw that I only got false positives. I feel like false negatives would be worse, since early guesses have majority negative anyway, so it's harder to narrow down which is the lie.
posted by RobotHero at 9:51 AM on February 23, 2023

Lirdle game #1754, Solved in 5 tries.

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posted by and they trembled before her fury at 9:54 AM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Got it in 5 but I'm terrified that getting good at lirdle will mess up my wordle brain.
posted by BrotherCaine at 9:56 AM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Fibble is also nice with a similar concept.
posted by frogmanjack at 10:09 AM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Seems like this would be extremely dependent on early luck getting multiple greens (so you know at least one is true). Otherwise you eat multiple turns trying to get yellows in their proper place while getting distracted by yellow-but-really-green lies and yellow-but-really-grey lies across five possible locations.
posted by Riki tiki at 10:26 AM on February 23, 2023

Also, yesterday's word was "amaze"?! That's sadistic, making people guess this with both a doubled letter and a "z".

All that said, this is a cool idea and I'll try it again tomorrow.
posted by Riki tiki at 10:28 AM on February 23, 2023

I wonder how this would play if it could only tell a lie about each position once. In other words, after five turns there wouldn't be any more lies, but you'd still have to have identified some of the earlier lies in order to take advantage of it.

It'd also put somewhat of a cap on the bad luck effect, and tie in nicely with the six-guesses default.
posted by Riki tiki at 10:39 AM on February 23, 2023

I needed 28 tries to get "amaze". Around line 8 I tried "glaze" and got "grey-yellow-green-green-green" and the "L" had earlier positive results, so I naturally assumed the "Z" was the lie, until there wasn't anywhere left for the "L" to go.

And I wrote this thing.
posted by morspin at 10:48 AM on February 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

Since you wrote the thing, does it account for what it said earlier when it decides on a current lie?

Like, since it had lied about L earlier, will it deliberately try to maintain that lie, or is it up to chance?
posted by RobotHero at 11:02 AM on February 23, 2023

It's totally random right now: each position is equally likely to be picked, and it flips a virtual coin to decide how to lie.

And it doesn't pay attention to previous lies.

If I was going to make this app more malicious, I would have it favour lying about rarer characters. Like after yesterday's experience, "uh no, there's no 'Z' here. Why do you ask?"
posted by morspin at 11:10 AM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

If I was going to make this app more malicious

ಠ_ಠ
posted by Riki tiki at 11:13 AM on February 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Okay, I was maybe treating it as smarter than it is. It claimed two times in a row that I had a yellow C, which turned out to be a lie. But yes, if I was deliberately malicious, I would favour lies that are consistent with what I've already said.
posted by RobotHero at 11:32 AM on February 23, 2023

Well, it took me 14 tries. Interesting, but doesn’t scratch the same itch as Wordle. But it doesn’t belong to the Paywall Times, so that’s good.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 12:46 PM on February 23, 2023

So, that took me 22 tries. But that was because I confused the meanings of the yellow and green squares and had them switched in my head.

So, you know, hard mode.
posted by Hamusutaa at 1:40 PM on February 23, 2023

Wait, does it keep that particular lie going in future lines? I'm confused.
posted by umbú at 2:14 PM on February 23, 2023

I got it in 5 but Wordle and all of its flavors remind me of Mastermind. My Mastermind skills are on fleek.
posted by bendy at 2:41 PM on February 23, 2023

I got very lucky I think. The same common letter turned up as yellow, grey, and green in different lines, and when I tried eliminating it as a test it meant that everything else in two of those had to be correct which simplified things.

Lirdle game #1754

Solved in 5 tries.

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lirdle.com - the lying word game
posted by PennD at 3:54 PM on February 23, 2023

The emperor is naked.
posted by Oyéah at 6:33 PM on February 23, 2023

Eight tries. An interesting variation.
posted by solarion at 6:41 PM on February 23, 2023

Lirdle game #6

Solved in 5 tries.
Got it in 5. Will see if the luck holds but I enjoyed it today.
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lirdle.com - the lying word game
posted by outfielder at 9:05 PM on February 23, 2023

Lirdle game #7

Solved in 8 tries.

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Thanks I hate it LOL. I saw every possible type of lie except yellow->green. I think I'll get better playing more

morspin, would it be a big effort to make the keyboard split colors on letters that have appeared as more than one color in the guesses? half and half, or three ways if a letter changed color between guesses?
posted by jermsplan at 9:19 AM on February 24, 2023

Lirdle game #7

Solved in 7 tries.

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Should have gotten it in six, I think I had all the right ingredients, just couldn't come up with a word that fit the solution right away.

I actually really enjoyed it - I got a bit of a sudoku vibe trying to figure out which lies were incompatible with each other. Of course now I immediately want to try again and you haven't given us a practice mode. Which is...in the spirit of wordle, I admit, but also grrr.
posted by mosst at 10:15 AM on February 24, 2023

And also I wish the keyboard would have updated per the lies I marked to help me keep track!
posted by mosst at 10:16 AM on February 24, 2023

Give me a suggestion how to color the keys as you get more information and I'll happily consider it. I punted on doing this, because there are six possible different types of falsehoods on each line, and part of the puzzle is to figure out which square is wrong, and what type of lie it is.
posted by morspin at 10:22 AM on February 24, 2023

You're right, it's really hard - I've types and deleted several ideas because I realized they don't make sense. Here are some options I see:

*The split letter as proposed by jermsplan - if the letter shows up more than once on the board with different colors, split the letter button to show each of the colors the board says. Including both the background color and the letter color. Quordle does a four-way split button that's pretty easy to understand - though you might run into more legibility issues needing to go up to a six-way split and needing to show the letter color as well.

*Simplest (?) option - let me manually change colors on the keyboard by holding shift down or something so that I can keep track of my theories. You could put a box or something around those ones I'd manually changed so that I know.

*Here's the best I can come up with for logic that "intelligently" keeps track of the best info you have - this assumes that if you haven't marked something as a lie, you believe it to be true (unless the multiple truths are incompatible with each other):
1. If there's only one guess on the board: color the keyboard letter to match whatever's on the board (both the background and the letter color).
2. If there are multiple guesses on the board and none are marked as lies:
2a. If the colors match, color the keyboard button that color.
2b. If yellow-green combo, color the keyboard button green (in keeping with regular wordle logic).
2c. If yellow-grey, green-grey, or yellow-green-grey combo, split the keyboard button between the colors.
3. If there are multiple guesses on the board and some but not all are marked as lies, eliminate the lies and then color as per #1 or #2 based on the truths only.
4. If there are multiple guesses on the board and all are marked as lies, split the button background between those colors and color the letter orange.

After much thought, I can see that the third option is not ideal - I could definitely see getting confused why something is a certain color when I can still see other colors on the board.
posted by mosst at 10:58 AM on February 24, 2023

Like mosst, actually thinking for 10 minutes made me realize it's not a super viable idea. Letters will appear as different colors for all kinds of different non-lie reasons (especially since you can't really play by wordle hard mode, so Green->Yellow is a valid move in lirdle)

Thanks for the fun game morspin.
posted by jermsplan at 11:22 AM on February 24, 2023

Also please keep in mind that Fluorescent Orange (#ffbf00 | rgb(255,191,0)) is my preferred choice for indicating lies.
posted by morspin at 11:23 AM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Green->Yellow is a valid move in lirdle

Shoot, yes, you're right. My above logic doesn't recognize that. I think creating a way to change the colors manually might be the easiest thing (The easiest to understand, anyways. I know almost nothing about programming).
posted by mosst at 11:49 AM on February 24, 2023

Of course now I immediately want to try again and you haven't given us a practice mode. Which is...in the spirit of wordle, I admit, but also grrr.

That's also done in the spirit of respecting your valuable time.
posted by morspin at 12:21 PM on February 24, 2023

That's also done in the spirit of respecting your valuable time.

Assumes facts not in evidence.

At any rate - thank you for such a fun game and for being such a good sport about my half-formed ideas. I'll definitely be coming back tomorrow :)
posted by mosst at 1:04 PM on February 24, 2023

Infuriating, well done. 7 didn’t feel bad, but it didn’t exactly feel good either.
posted by mubba at 5:36 PM on February 24, 2023

Don't know if I got better or got luckier. Enjoyed it more than yesterday though, now that I understand it

Lirdle game #8

Solved in 5 tries.

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lirdle.com - the lying word game
posted by jermsplan at 9:04 AM on February 25, 2023

HA!

Lirdle game #9

Solved in 3 tries.

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lirdle.com - the lying word game
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:30 PM on February 26, 2023

I really liked the concept, but...

I guessed "goose" and the s was marked as yellow and the e as grey. Then I guessed "loose" and both the s and e were marked green. I don't understand how this can be consistent with "one lie per line."

Am I missing something?
posted by dsword at 11:04 PM on February 26, 2023

The correct colors were yellow for the S, and green for the E. It lied about the E the first time, and the S the second time.
posted by rifflesby at 12:07 AM on February 27, 2023

Ahh. Yes. Thank you. This makes a lot more sense in the morning, and not late at night after, um, attending a basketball game.
posted by dsword at 7:57 AM on February 27, 2023

I'll throw in this discussion from the Projects page that shows how much lirdle brings in the Butterfly Effect. "pol" reports:

Mine lied twice in a line. If you have a letter that appears twice, and you use the letter twice in a line, it will mark both of the double letters as misplaced even if one of them is correct.

Example, if the word is STEED and you guess BEETS, and it lies about one of the consonants, it will mark both E's as "misplaced", even though one of them is correct. It's like the game is labeling each E as different and thinks I got the third position E in the second slot, and the 4th position E in the third slot (instead of thinking that the second position E is misplaced, and the third position is correct).

It's possible that I just hit a bug in today's game though, and maybe this doesn't happen with every double-letter puzzle.

and I replied:

I don't have any records of all of people''s game play, but here's a definite possibility.

Target word:    S  T  E  E  D

Your guess:     B  E  E  T  S

Raw score:      0  1  2  1  1  

Legend: 0: miss, 1: right letter, wrong pos, 2: right letter, right pos

Let's say lirdle randomly picks position #3 to change
and flips a coin to determine how to change it. The math for this is:

* heads: subtract 1 from the raw score
* tails: add 1 to the raw score

and do some fancy math to ensure the new value is 0, 1, or 2, and not -1 or 3

So it picks position 3, flips a heads, so the math is (2 - 1) = 1, and now you see

Target word:    S  T  E  E  D

Your guess:     B  E  E  T  S

Raw score:      0  1  1  1  1

... one grey, and four yellows

If it instead had picked position #2 and flipped tails (adding 1), your answer would be:

Target word:    S  T  E  E  D

Your guess:     B  E  E  T  S

Raw score:      0  2  2  1  1

two greens and two yellows.

So one small change gets a very different response.

How was the basketball game?
posted by morspin at 4:38 PM on February 27, 2023

I just had the same thing where two repeated letters both changed colour and I had that moment where I thought that should be impossible. But it's actually a great thing to find, because you've just narrowed the lies down to those two letters, and then you know all the others can't be lies.

There's the ability to mark certain entries as lies, but I wonder about the opposite? Now that I know for sure three letters are true in both of these guesses, then I can deduce anywhere those letters are consistent with this, must also be true? Which can help me narrow down which is the lie in other guesses.

Though I guess I have to be careful with yellows/greens. Like, a truthful green A in one guess doesn't guarantee all yellow As in other positions are true. There could be two As, and what was supposed to be a green A is turned yellow.

I had a certain letter in a certain place for 4 out of my first 6 guesses, and it marked it green for 3 of them. Which definitely sent me down the wrong path for a while.
posted by RobotHero at 9:23 AM on February 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Okay, I see there is a way to mark the true ones that I overlooked before.

It does feel a lot more antagonistic than most wordle variants. Like, I feel more like I've defeated an enemy that has been actively thwarting me than just solved a puzzle.
posted by RobotHero at 7:39 AM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's all random. Honest. The words, which character to lie about, and how to lie. The only non-random thing in the game right now is how I pick the testimonial of the week.
posted by morspin at 8:20 PM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Tried out the new dark mode last night, and. Well.
I look forward to increasingly paranoid dreams the longer I use this as a sleep aid.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 4:58 AM on March 6, 2023

Lirdle game #26

Solved in 5 tries.

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lirdle.com - the lying word game


Just discovered this via the podcast - I'm not very active on MetaFilter anymore - and I absolutely love it. I'd stopped playing Wordle some time ago (humblebrag: after getting 100 in a row and finding it insufficiently challenging) but went with my old standard first three Wordle guesses here. Took several minutes for the last two guesses, to come up with words that were consistent with previous information. Even with four greens on the second-to-last guess (which means at least three of them were right) took some time to come up with the correct word.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 5:24 PM on March 15, 2023