Kirtley Scientific - John R. Kirtley
 

Krutchle - A crutch to help play Wordle

     Wordle® is a New York Times trademarked word game. It is now the most popular game on the internet. The object of the game is to guess a five letter word in six guesses or less. The accuracy of each letter in each guess is indicated by tiles of different colors: grey for no matches with the target word, yellow for a match but in an incorrect position, and green for a correct letter in a correct position. Krutchle is an app that helps the user play Wordle® if really stuck on the next guess. Krutchle can also be used for a quick post-play analysis of a Wordle® game. Krutchle indicates how many words are allowed, and if desired provides a list of allowed words after each guess, given the constraints provided by the matches (and non-matches) to letters and positions from the previous guesses. In Krutchle the allowed guesses are derived from two dictionaries , one (wordle-La) containing common words, and a second (wordle-Ta) containing uncommon words. It is unlikely that the target word will be drawn from the uncommon word list, but Wordle® may allow the user to enter a word from this list.

      Krutchle can be used when stuck playing Wordle® as follows. Pressing the Krutchle icon (a grey, yellow, and green checkerboard with a black "K" superimposed) on the user iphone will display the home view, labelled "Enter guesses". The user can navigate to and from the second view, labelled "Display allowed words" by pressing the labelled icons at the bottom of the view screens. In the "Enter guesses" screen the position of the letter to be entered is indicated by a light grey background color in the 5x6 tile field above the keyboard. A tile color and a letter is chosen for each of five letters in a guess word. Typically the tile color is chosen first by pressing the "Grey", "Yellow", or "Green" keys in the keyboard. The tile color is indicated by the background color of the "Tile color" label just above the keyboard. A letter key is then pressed. The tile is filled with the chosen letter and the chosen color. The light grey background advances one space to the next position. If the next letter has the same color it is not necessary to press a color key again. If a mistake is made, the "Back" key will erase the current letter entry and move back one space. After the 5 letters for a guess are entered, the user presses "Enter". The program then displays the total number of "common" and "uncommon" allowed words. If desired, the user can see lists of the allowed words by pressing the "Display allowed words" icon. As many as 6 guesses can be entered in a similar fashion. The user can clear the guesses and start over by pressing "Restart".

      Example screen shots of the two views after successive guesses are shown in Figures 1-4. In this case the target word is "SCONE". Of course while playing Wordle® the user doesn't know what the target word is, but Wordle® displays the appropriate tile colors after each guess. The first guess word is "ALIEN". The target word does not include the letters "A", "L", or "I", so Wordle® displays them, and the user enters them in Krutchle, with grey tiles. The target word does include the letters "E", and "N", but not in the same positions as the target word, so the user enters them with yellow tiles. After "Enter" is pressed, the program calculates that there are 49 common and 236 uncommon words left and displays that information. If desired the user can press the "Display allowed words" icon. The "Desired allowed words" screen then shows two columns of words, the left one for common words, and the right one for uncommon words. If there are more words in each column than can fit on the view, each can be scrolled independently. The user can then return to the "Enter guesses" view by pressing the "Enter guesses" icon at the bottom of the "Display allowed words" view.


  
Figure 1. Screen shots of the (a) "Enter guesses" and "Display allowed words" views after the first guess, "ALIEN" is entered. In this case the target word is "SCONE".

      The second guess is "YOURS". For the target word "SCONE" only the "S" has a yellow tile. The other letters have grey tiles. When "Enter" is pressed, the program displays that there are 7 common and 13 uncommon allowed words left. These can be viewed by pressing the "Display allowed words" icon. The user returns to the "Enter guesses" view by pressing the "Enter guesses" icon at the bottom of the "Display allowed words" view.


  
Figure 2. Screen shots of the (a) "Enter guesses" and "Display allowed words" views after the second guess "YOURS" is entered.

      The third guess is "STONE". Since the target word is "SCONE" the letters "S", "O", "N" and "E" are entered with green tiles, while the letter "T" has a grey tile. When "Enter" is pressed, the program displays that there are 2 common and 0 uncommon allowed words left. When the "Display allowed words" icon is pressed, the program displays that only "SCONE" and "SHONE" are now allowed.


  
Figure 3. Screen shots of the (a) "Enter guesses" and "Display allowed words" view after the third guess, "STONE" is entered.

      Finally, for the 4th guess the user enters "SCONE". Since this is the target word, all tiles are entered as green, and the program displays that there is only one possible word left.


  
Figure 4. Screen shots of the (a) "Enter guesses" and "Display allowed words" view after the fourth guess, "SCONE".

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