Interesting! I think there is a lot of math going on in these kind of games. I have noticed interesting patterns in my game https://videopuzzle.org/ as well.
In daily mode, everyone gets a video scrambled into 4x4 pieces, in the same way, and needs to unscramble it. The operations available to unscramble a video are swapping a tile, and shifting the entire board. The lowest score every day is usually 12-14, but sometimes much lower.
Before I introduced the shifting function, surprisingly, every puzzle could only be solved in an either even or odd number of moves. Some days, all solutions would be 12-14-16 etc, while other days only 13-15-17 were possible. The arrows have changed this, as you can sometimes shave another move off if you use it smartly.
Mathematics of the daily word game Waffle
(arxiv.org)58 points by belter 17 January 2025 | 19 comments
Comments
Wordle - NYT daily word game. https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html
Waffle - some other game. https://wafflegame.net/
In daily mode, everyone gets a video scrambled into 4x4 pieces, in the same way, and needs to unscramble it. The operations available to unscramble a video are swapping a tile, and shifting the entire board. The lowest score every day is usually 12-14, but sometimes much lower.
Before I introduced the shifting function, surprisingly, every puzzle could only be solved in an either even or odd number of moves. Some days, all solutions would be 12-14-16 etc, while other days only 13-15-17 were possible. The arrows have changed this, as you can sometimes shave another move off if you use it smartly.
The host name includes “nyt”, but the web page doesn’t seem to be owned by the New York Times.