There Is No Antimemetics Division (2018)

Qntm is also the author of - Hatetris: Tetris where the computer gives you the worst possible next piece https://qntm.org/files/hatetris/hatetris.html

- Absurdle: Wordle where the computer narrows down (as little as possible) to a solution word as you guess https://qntm.org/files/absurdle/absurdle.html

- "All I want for Christmas is a negative leap second" https://qntm.org/leap

- "It's probably time to stop recommending Clean Code" https://qntm.org/clean

Interesting cat!

I want to add the story "Lena", which has been posted here a couple of times as well. It's fantastic.

https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

A later blog post about the story:

https://qntm.org/uploading

There's also a sequel to Lena, though not for free online. https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1732377446576435337

Thank you! I had no idea and really love Lena (and much of qntm's other writing).

> So... imagine that someone enters a kitchen, because they want to show you how to make a cup of coffee. As you watch carefully, they flick a switch on the wall. The switch looks like a light switch, but none of the lights in the kitchen turn on or off. Next, they open a cabinet and take down a mug, set it on the worktop, and then tap it twice with a teaspoon. They wait for thirty seconds, and finally they reach behind the refrigerator, where you can't see, and pull out a different mug, this one full of fresh coffee.

> ...What just happened? What was flicking the switch for? Was tapping the empty mug part of the procedure? Where did the coffee come from?

> That's what this code is like.

I hope to never write code that warrants a description half as scathing as this one

Absurdle was a lot of fun! I was thinking the "share score" thing does show a score of "n/∞" which I guess is supposed to mean the game could keep going for an indefinite length... but someone smarter than me can likely prove what the upper bound is in the general case or in the case of your opening word, both of which are definitely going to be lower than ∞

I hope to write code that warrants a description at least twice as scathing as this one. But, you know, on purpose; when I'm intentionally fucking with someone. (I don't know of Martin ever trying to claim that Clean Code was actually a parody or practical joke, though I'll admit I can't rule it out.)

There are only about 2300 words in regular Wordle's dictionary, which makes a pretty obvious ceiling. We can shrink that further by picking a starting word like TRACE, because the largest possible group the also could fall into after that is just 350. You could then keep going with that analysis.