Have you played Semantle?

Never heard of it, but I clicked your link and gave it a try. Semantic distance: very interesting concept for a game. I got today’s word in 46. Yes, I think I would try it again, but maybe not at bedtime.

What I failed to figure out was if I could save the game unfinished, leave and come back.

I would also love to know how semantic proximity of a word could be computed—and how all the words with multiple meanings are managed: not just prodigies of definition, such as “get,” but words like “light”: not dark, not heavy, illuminate, lamp, land (on), etc.

I also noticed that one of the “close” words in this puzzle #68 (closeness rating 993) was a misspelling. That does not seem quite fair.

Anyway, @filmfann, thanks for the link!

This is a really neat idea!
Will try it and report back.

Though I’m on the 15th try and laughing that I managed to get a score of “-0.50” on one of my guesses.

UPDATE: Got it in 21! Though lucky guess since my next closest word was only 75/1000.

I just tried it while the coffee pot was brewing. I go t it in 20! That will never happen again!
Thanks!
Just what I need, another excuse to sit at my laptop. :-)

I tried this morning but could not get closer than 14.38; similar words came back as colder. I even tried an adverb but it got me colder.

It won’t replace Wordle for me, since I like the 6 guesses or fail rather than an unending chain of guesses.

It looks like it hasn’t been around that long, but I feel like I have played something very like this before, and I feel like someone of Fluther suggested it to us before.

I seem to have got pretty close (28.76 631/1000), but feel stumped now. I feel like I remember the same sense of hopeless frustration as the last time.

I tried it for the first time today, puzzle 68. Not quite sure what to make of it. I got close, 57.11, 995/1000, but can’t nail it. If I can’t solve it, I will check the answer tomorrow.

Update – I got it in 118 guesses. I found the ratings not to be that helpful.

987/1000 was confusing.

(I didn’t guess it. Just looking at the list.)

@Jeruba Good catch. Really strange choice to include a misspelling. Though curious how it calculated semantic closeness of misspelling and correctly spelled word.

@Jeruba I have closed the tab on my Kindle, and returned to the game later without having to start over.
The game resets to a new word at 5pm, California time.

Wait, what? . . . THAT was the answer to puzzle #68? I thought I was getting close, from my statistics, but I would never have gone that direction from where I was, I think. I guess I don’t really get how the puzzle’s ratings work.

I got nowhere yesterday and after more than 100 guesses I gave up as I wasn’t getting any closer. When I saw the answer this morning, I couldn’t see any connection with my best guesses.

Today I got lucky with a guess and got the answer in 24 guesses. I would have got the answer sooner had I thought to try the singular form of a word.

I solved today’s puzzle, but I cheated. I was able to match 998/1000, but could not do better. I did a Web search for synonyms of the 998/1000 word and one of them was a match.

Update: Semantle is kicking my ass today.

@raum Me too. Best I’ve got is 919.

So I gave up on Semantle today. The target word was completely different than any clue would lead you to. FTS!

I just solved #72 in 51 guesses, but I’m still scratching my head. Once I got into the 900s, I expected to see a pattern or path, a trajectory that reflected getting warmer and warmer. Words I really thought were related were getting a very cold rating. My first random guess was civility, and looking now at the list of nearest words, I can’t see any connection whatsoever among the words surrounding it.

This game is good brain exercise, I’m sure, but what I’m not seeing is a way to strategize, as there is with the Wordle-type games.

#73 isn’t quite so abstract, so the close relationships make more sense to me, but how they are ordered doesn’t. It’s almost as if the algorithm were programmed to be a little psychotic.

I solved #73 in 50 guesses, but I had to give up on #72. I looked for words that were similar to my best guesses but I wasn’t getting any closer so I looked words that were different. It is easy to get stuck in a blind alley filled with similar words and it seems to take luck to get out of it.

I am way stuck on #76 today, and greatly puzzled when words that seem very close (e.g., educate and education, academy and academic, teach and learn) score very far apart from one another. I’m over 150 now and my ideas have run dry.

Wondering if there is really any logic to this that is better than hit or miss. So far my correct answers in 4 or 5 previous games have surprised me. They seemed almost random in the mix of “warm” answers.

. . .

Aaand – now that I have timed out, at 5 p.m. PDT, the solution is nothing like what I was expecting. Foo.

Sorry @Jeruba. Today was better.

By now I’ve pretty much abandoned this game.

Along with other traits, a good game has the right combination of luck and skill. The right combination varies among games, from Candyland to chess, but for a particular game there seems to be a right combination.

This one seems to involve way more luck than skill because you can’t calculate your moves. It seems to call for skill but actually devolves to a lot of chance. You are pretty much firing blind among possibilities that probably number in the tens of thousands, with very little to go on and a perverse way of generating misleading information.

The other day the word was HORSE. After I found it, I tried the word HEROIN. It didn’t rate.
Yesterday the word was MOTHER. The word DOG rated high. This game can be annoying.

I decided to give it one more try. Right now, tonight, 8:11 pm PDT, 4/19, I am here: I have a dozen words in the 900s, the closest of which is 998/1000. I can’t think of anything else.

At some point I started combing through thesaurus entries, and the results were maddeningly inconsistent: two virtually interchangeable words, one in the 900s and another way down in the cold; two seemingly unrelated words five points apart.

I want to solve this one, and then I really am done. This game is a lot of frustration for very little reward. It should have spent longer in beta.

Anybody want to share what you’ve got so far in the top tier? Mine ranges now from 2/1000 to 998/1000, and I can’t see a trend.

Well, ok, that’s it for me. I gave up, only two from the top. Way too random and illogical for me.

Now deleting bookmark.

@Jeruba Yes, I had issues with yesterday’s game. The closest I got was #983, and now that I gave up and saw the answer, I am annoyed at how highly that word was rated.

Is anybody around here still playing this? I quit after the post just above @filmfann.‘s

Hmm, the program won’t let me type ‘s after the username, followed by a period. It moves the period to precede the ‘s. I wonder what the logic is there.

I gave up about two days after my last post. :/

I know we don’t need another way to waste out time, but…
Have you tried DuoTrigordle?
It is 32 Wordle games that you must solve in 37 guesses. That means you only have 5 chances to miss.
It is quite exciting. I did one while waiting in the airport.

I just tried it. It is an interesting idea, but it is tough keeping track of 32 boards simultaneously

My sister got it day before yesterday in 6 guesses.
I still waste an hour each day. Often I am frustrated by daft clues.

@LuckyGuy Had to use all 37 guesses. Will try again tomorrow. Hopefully won’t be as close as it was today.

I just tried DuoRrigodle. Got it in 34 guesses. More stressful than I enjoy.

DuoTrigordle in 36. Four words and then began guessing. Will try three words first tomorrow. And work back from there.

@filmfann It feels kind of like busy work. Especially towards to end. Level of enjoyment varies with my mood. :)

Whoops…DuoTrigordle in 36 again today. Missed two. :/

Same score as yesterday, but was more fun guessing after two words than waiting to guess after four words.

I did it in 35 today. My best ever!

Still stuck at 36. :/

Finally broke my 36 run.
Finished in 34 today.

Wow! That is quite an accomplishment!
I have not been playing every day. A lot of lawn maintenance needs to be done.

Hmmm… I wonder If I can mount my laptop on top of the garden tractor.

Haha…yes! Mount the laptop on the tractor!

Ooph. Back to 36 today.

And one word I didn’t know and only got by process of elimination. :/

On the plus side, I learned a new word. :)

Finished in 35 today.
Using three starter words.

I am enjoying duotrigordle much more than semantle.
That said, yesterday I got the semantle word in 16.

Holy Moses!