Mathematics articles

The Five-Guess Paradox: Why Multi-Board Word Games Give You Five Exploratory Turns

Quordle gives you 9 guesses to solve 4 boards. Octordle gives you 13 guesses to solve 8. Sedecordle gives you 21 guesses to solve 16. Those rules look progressively more generous. The largest game gives you twelve more guesses than the smallest. But subtract the number of answers you must enter: Game Boards ((k)) Guess limit ((G)) (G-k) Quordle 4 9 5 Octordle 8 13 5 Sedecordle 16 21 5 All three …

The Mathematics of Solving 4, 8, and 16 Wordles at Once

Solving four Wordles at once sounds like four times the work. Solving sixteen sounds like sixteen times the work. The mathematics says something stranger. The number of possible answer combinations grows exponentially, yet every guess also returns feedback from every unsolved board. More boards create more uncertainty, but they also make each shared guess more informative. Then, late in the game, …