TLDR: the 8 initial guesses MODEL LEVIN TAPPA GRABS DURGY FLYTE CHAWK SPOOR provide enough information to always recover the hidden word in Wordle, no matter the hidden word. Can you find fewer than 8 (magic) words that also solve Wordle?
May 18th, 2022: Laurent Poirrier has provided a definitive (negative) answer to the Magic Words Challenge: at least 6 + 1 guesses are required to solve Wordle offline, and so the 6 guess formulation of the original game cannot be solved offline. He has written a wonderful post about the result. The Magic Words Challenge is now officially ended!
March 5th, 2022: Virgile Andreani has found a set of 6 words that solve Wordle! They are COMBO FATTY GRRRL SPUDS VENGE WHILK. This is very exciting: just one less word and Wordle will be solved offline!
March 2nd, 2022: Virgile Andreani has found a set of 7 words that solve Wordle! They are CLANG FATTY ODDER RUMBA SKILL VERGE WHOOP.
Other solvers can solve Wordle in fewer guesses, but they do so online, using feedback from each guess to decide upon the next guess.
My goal is to solve Wordle offline: remember these 8 words and you can solve Wordle on a desert island were your life to depend upon it (important: remember to also take the 2309 word list with you!).
The fundamental question is: what is the smallest set of guesses which always solve Wordle? I've shown it can be solved with 8 words. Can it be solved with 7? 6? 5? 5 is the number required if the islanders described above insist on 6 round Wordle (the official version!).
I used a simple genetic algorithm and a Wordle simulator. The [https://github.com/alexandres/magicwordschallenge/issues/2](algorithm that checks whether a solution is valid) is thanks to Virgile Andreani.
If you'd like to solve for 7 words, change GA_TARGET_SIZE to 7 in magicwords.cpp. I ran the system for a couple of days searching for 7 words and failed. Maybe you'll have better luck.
To run,
$> make
$> ./magicwordsInput your candidate solutions (one per line) on stdin to the ./check program. For each candidate solution, it will output 1 if it solves Wordle, 0 if it doesn't.
$> make
$> echo MODEL LEVIN TAPPA GRABS DURGY FLYTE CHAWK SPOOR | ./check
# outputs 1
$> echo MODEL LEVIN TAPPA GRABS DURGY FLYTE CHAWK PIANO | ./check
# outputs 0