I built an app to cheat at wordle

Wordle sucks, I hate it, so I built an app to cheat at it.

I explain in my R book how we can use the wordle to practice our data skills, in particular filtering a dataset. This app is just the completed exercise rendered in a Shiny App. Like most apps I make, it works most of the time (it gets a bit buggy with double letters). It’s by no means as good as someone that can spell and do the wordle, but I am not one of those people so it’s better than me at least.

Here’s how it works.

Open the app here: https://vr7ney-richard-m0clarke.shinyapps.io/wordle_app/

Have a version of the wordle open. I suggest: https://wordleunlimited.org/

Click the Generate Starting Word button until you find a word that you like.

Input this in the wordle and get the feedback.

In this case we know that the word starts with an R, there is an E somewhere in the word and A, C and T are not in the word.

We then feed this information (in lower case, no spaces) back into the app and click the generate next guess

This then shows the top ten words ordered by frequency in the dataset.

Pick one of these and then it back to the wordle app for feedback for the word.

Back to the app to update, adding the grey letters, removing the orange and adding the new green.

Then back to the wordle.

Back to app (lots of steps I know, but its still more appealing to me than actually solving the wordle)

Down to three choices now, fingers crossed!

Damn it, stupid game (also stupid screenshotter). Think I can take it form here.

Yes, I know, 5 is not great but I didn’t have to think at all (apart form all the coding I did) and that’s priceless.

If you’d like to learn to cheat at the wordle for yourself (and learn some R) check out the exercise I set my students here: https://richclarkepsy.github.io/NS7154_25/day2.html#exercise-2-solve-the-wordle-with-code-optional

If you want to see this idea done properly by a far superior coder/mathematician check out this stunning video by 3blue1brown: