thesilican
commented
5 months ago I think a better solution would to be to generate "worse" starting words for jumble. Currently the game chooses a set of 3 words with the condition that they must contain among them at least 12 unique letters, which means that it is guaranteed that 12 letters are guessed by every set of jumble starter words. This could realistically be reduced closer to 8-10. I'll take a look at some samples to see what plays better.
Feature Description Jumble mode adds novelty and keeps me coming back. But fixing the number of starting guesses at three means it is too easy. If a player can frequently win the daily Duotrigordle in 34, it's a bit unsatisfying to then play Jumble, win in 35 and not be allowed to try and do better.
I would like to have the option of playing with two starting guesses (or possibly even one?).
Evidence With three starting guesses, a huge percentage of boards are solvable on the next guess (solvable = only one possible word left on the solution list). Especially as Jumble guarantees that the three guesses are reasonably "good".
Testing a few sets of starting guesses generated by Daily/Practice Jumble:
If there's a 30-40% chance any given board is solvable, then the probability of at least one board being solvable on a grid of 32 is ~100%. If the player makes no mistakes, they are almost guaranteed a win in 35.
Leaderboard A quick look at the leaderboards suggests many real players are winning Jumble in 35. Yesterday (game day 772), the most common Jumble outcome was a win in 35. In many recent days, the guess distribution looks skewed toward 35 and 36.