Building a “Wordle” function, part 1

These slides capture what we worked on Tuesday night’s “Think Like a Coder” meetup: coming up with a first attempt at a “Wordle” function. Given a guess word and a goal word, it should output a Wordle-style score.

We came up with a solution that I like to call the “close enough” algorithm. It goes through the guess word one character at a time, comparing the current guess word character with the goal word character in the same position.

When making those character-by-character comparisons, the function follows the rules:

Here’s the “close enough” algorithm, implemented in Python…

def wordle(guess_word, goal_word):
    
    # Go through the guess word one character at a time, getting...
    # 
    # 1. index: The position of the character
    # 2. character: The character at that position
    for index, character in enumerate(guess_word):
        
        # Compare the current character in the guess word
        # to the goal word character at the same position
        if character == goal_word[index]:
            # Current character in the guess word
            # matches its counterpart in the goal word
            print("green")
        elif character in goal_word:
            # Current character in the guess word
            # DOESN’T match its counterpart in the goal word,
            # but DOES appear in the goal word
            print("yellow")
        else:
            # Current character DOESN’T appear in the goal word
            print("gray")

…and here’s the JavaScript implementation:

function wordle(guessWord, goalWord) {
    
    // Go through the guess word one character at a time
    for (let index in guessWord) {
        // Compare the current character in the guess word
        // to the goal word character at the same position
        if (guessWord[index] == goalWord[index]) {
            // Current character in the guess word
            // matches its counterpart in the goal word
            console.log('green')
        } else if (goalWord.includes(guessWord[index])) {
            // Current character in the guess word
            // DOESN’T match its counterpart in the goal word,
            // but DOES appear in the goal word
            console.log('yellow')
        } else {
            // Current character DOESN’T appear in the goal word
            console.log('gray')
        }
    }
}        

I call the solution “close enough” because yellow is a special case in Wordle. If the guess word is ATOLL and the goal word is ALOFT, the first L in ATOLL should be yellow and the second should be gray because there’s only one L in ALOFT.

We didn’t settle on the “close enough” algorithm — it was just enough for that night’s session. In the next session, we’ll refine the algorithm so that it matches Wordle’s!

Want to become a better programmer? Join us at the next Think Like a Coder meetup!