Now trolling here

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1enuhw5/commen...

Arriving a bit late to the party, but I couldn't resist crafting a quick binary search solution in Python.

  from urllib.request import urlopen, Request
  DICT_URL = "https://grandmasword.com/dictionary.js"
  response = urlopen(Request(DICT_URL, headers={"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0"}))
  words = [w.strip('"[];\n') for w in response.read().decode().split("[")[1].split(",")]
  lo, hi, answer = 0, len(words) - 1, ""
  while answer != "d":
      mid = lo + (hi - lo) // 2
      print(words[mid])
      answer = input("after/before/done? [abd] ")
      if answer == "a":
          lo = mid + 1
      elif answer == "b":
          hi = mid - 1

  MALPIGHIAS
  after/before/done? [abd] a
  RUBIFIES
  after/before/done? [abd] a
  TEARERS
  after/before/done? [abd] a
  UNMANLIEST
  after/before/done? [abd] a
  VORTICES
  after/before/done? [abd] b
  UTOPIANIZING
  after/before/done? [abd] a
  VERTICILLASTERS
  after/before/done? [abd] a
  VIROSE
  after/before/done? [abd] a
  VIZARD
  after/before/done? [abd] a
  VOLCANISE
  after/before/done? [abd] a
  VOLUMIZER
  after/before/done? [abd] b
  VOLPINOS
  after/before/done? [abd] b
  VOLITATE
  after/before/done? [abd] b
  VOLCANOLOGICAL
  after/before/done? [abd] b
  VOLCANIZATION
  after/before/done? [abd] a
  VOLCANIZES
  after/before/done? [abd] a
  VOLCANO
  after/before/done? [abd] d

Edit: See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41217457.

A small bug report: the "Share score" button on macOS Safari doesn't offer "copy" as an option for some reason. The same functionality on guess the game[0] has the same limitation, but it also copies to the clipboard automatically. Wordle[1] seems to just copy to the clipboard only.

[0]: https://guessthe.game

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html

Suggestions, limit to 5 chars and use a Wordle-like interface so your phone can’t suggest words.

I could see this being a legit NYT game.

If you guess a word that isn’t in the dictionary, the text box looks like it’s cleared but my phone’s (iPhone) keyboard’s autocomplete either didn’t pick that up or there’s still some hidden content in the box.

It would be nice if the list was always sorted in totality.

(So I guess, thanks for not teaching her about bundlers and minifiers yet :))

view-source gives away the answer for the next 20 days....

It's a very interesting concept as I'm sure you can extract some interesting insight about the profile of a user from the list of 12+ words they'll come up with. (When looking back at most of mine, they're words that came up in this week's conversations or lyrics of my Spotify playlists)

Like, it might be a fascinating little add-on to have a "Rorschach" LLM-based module attached which looks at the vocabulary you used and tries to sketch out a cold reading about you.

I would come up with categories of increasing difficulty. "Colors", "Advanced Colors", "Common Fruit", "All Fruit", etc.

The game mechanic is great and worked flawlessly though!

There's also the case of the 80-some-year-old Japanese lady who wrote her own iPhone app, a game about arranging traditional Japanese paper dolls: https://social-innovation.hitachi/en/article/colors-wakamiya...

If you're retired, bored, and have a lot of time on your hands, learning tech proficiency and programming seems a good way to pass the time and help keep your mind sharp. Just as it was for us bored kids back in the day.

https://grandmasword.com

It was volcano but I only discovered it after finding that Android autocorrect can suggest a word for me.

If you like this, check out https://betweenle.com.

Betweenle is based on the same game logic, but gives you very useful visual clues along the way.

I got reeeealy close (and then asked an llm....)

Congrats to your grandma for making a game!

Feature request - colour code incorrect guesses by distance from the solution. You could look up 'Hamming distance' for one approach to that.

Vodka should not be below voice.

  secretWords = ['test', 'test', 'test', 'horse', 'chocolate', 'garden', 'volcano', 'orange', 'elephant', 'star', 'violin', 'egg', 'pencil', 'forest', 'lamp', 'island', 'potato', 'happy', 'toilet', 'shell'];

https://grandmasword.com

https://grandmasword.com

Edit: I got it in 18 guesses

My own 74 year old surviving parent would never be able to get them selves to even try, as they have spent most of their lives telling reiterating a mantra about how little they know about technology.

It has been a guiding principle of mine to never do that with anything, after seeing the effect it has had on her.

  import requests
  url = 'https://grandmasword.com/dictionary.js'
  response = requests.get(url)
  lines = response.text.split('\n')[2:]
  exec('\n'.join(lines))
  def binary_search(dictionary):
    while len(dictionary) > 1:
        mid_index = len(dictionary) // 2
        mid_word = dictionary[mid_index]
        print(f"Guess this middle word: {mid_word}")
        user_input = input("Did grandma say her word is before or after? (type b or a)").strip().lower()
        dictionary = dictionary[:mid_index] if user_input == "b" else dictionary[mid_index + 1:]
    print(f"Grannys word: {dictionary[0]}" if dictionary else "No words left in the dictionary.")
  binary_search(dictionary)

Hmmm...