Mathematics of the daily word game Waffle

Is there a daily NYT word game called Waffle? I don't think so?

Wordle - NYT daily word game. https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html

Waffle - some other game. https://wafflegame.net/

Weird...the NYT is referenced only in the Introduction, and never is it suggested that there is an affiliation between the New York Times and the game Waffle or its creator. They really only reference Wordle to note that Waffle has some very loose similarities, like the fact that they both use letter tiles and both use different colors to hint where those tiles go.

Makes me wonder if the title of the article was generated by an LLM.

EDIT: add context; fix typo

Hmm strange! Well, we've de-NYT'd the title above.

> "This note explores some mathematics associated with the word game Waffle, which has similar rules to Wordle."

I was about to point out the same thing. The title should read "NYT-like."

And of course NYT only bought Wordle, so the likeness would be to Wordle, nothing to do with NYT at all.

I like Waffle a lot, and thought about the best strategy for creating the grids, which is probably just a lot of trial and error.

Oh, glad to hear that you like it :) I created Waffle.

Yes, it's sort of evolved over time really. Brute force with heuristics, I'd say. The word list is certainly important, along with a few other things that I like to think keep the level of quality above the inferior knock-offs.

Yes, I can confirm (as the creator) that it is not a NYT game. I wanted to create something as simple as Wordle, but that didn't rely on luck. I presume that the author put NYT in the title to catch attention. I can't think why else.

Thanks for reaching out. I have done some word games for my own amusement and surprised myself how quickly I can try and reject permutations even in JavaScript. It has felt like the opportunity for a clever algorithm has been robbed!