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2026-04-06
I've recently been thinking about Wordle,
the Mastermind-style
word guessing game, that everyone was playing and talking about in 2020. Specifically, I've been
thinking about mixing Wordle with other games.
Tetris
The first game I tried mixing Wordle with is Tetris, the addictive puzzle game that made
tetrominos famous.
In Wordle, letters that you guess are coloured green (letter in the right place),
yellow (letter that's in the answer but in the wrong place), or grey (letter not in the answer).
Inspired by noticing that the yellow squares in one of my Wordle attempts made a Tetris S-block, I
created a new bot on Bluesky: @wordle-tetris.bsky.social.
This bot posts a set of six words each day that make the next frame in a game of Tetris when
used on Wordle. Every time, the bot is given a new piece, it quickly rotates and moves it into
what it thinks is the best position (24 hours
between frames gives the bot a lot of time to press the buttons to do this) then lets the block fall.
Currently, the bot does not move or rotate the block as it falls.
For example, the bot's first post was:
| L | U | R | I | D |
| P | U | L | U | T |
| A | A | R | G | H |
| R | H | O | N | E |
| B | R | I | D | E |
| R | E | F | A | N |
The following day it posted:
| W | E | B | B | Y |
| T | R | A | I | N |
| A | T | R | I | A |
| L | E | V | E | L |
| L | I | M | M | A |
| W | I | P | E | D |
It continued until it posted this on the fifth day:
| B | U | N | D | U |
| K | A | P | P | A |
| M | A | C | C | A |
| D | U | R | A | L |
| H | O | K | U | M |
| M | O | I | L | E |
| C | O | R | K | Y |
| L | E | F | T | E |
| D | O | R | S | A |
| F | E | D | E | X |
| S | T | R | O | P |
| E | T | A | P | E |
On the eighth day,
the bot reached its first game over, as there was no valid word that could give this row:
After a couple of games, I updated the code that runs the bot so that it now picks
commonly used words whenever it can. This makes
the bot's more recent posts
look a lot more like actual guesses someone could have made:
| B | R | E | A | D |
| M | E | T | E | R |
| K | A | R | M | A |
| L | I | K | E | D |
| A | P | A | R | T |
| T | O | U | G | H |
In Wordle, it's impossible to get four green squares and one yellow square in a row, as if four
letters are correct, the other letter cannot be a correct letter in the wrong position. This means
that Wordle Tetris bot can never clear more than two lines at once, as a line with four greens and
a yellow must appear at some point on the way to the clearance. the bot can clear two lines at once
though if it mangages to set up something like this:
If you prefer your explanations in video form, Ayliean made a fun
YouTube short about the Wordle Tetris bot.
And if you're interested, the code that runs the bot is available on Codeberg.
Pokémon Blue
![](javascript:showlimage("pokemon-wordle.png"))
A Game Boy with Pokémon Wordle inputs
The other game that I've recently mixed Wordle with is Pokémon Blue.
Whenever I play Pokémon on an emulator, I use
W, A, S and D for the arrow keys,
K and J for the A and B buttons,
and O and I for the start and select buttons. In February, I started playing a game with the
keyboard input used to play both Pokémon Blue and Wordle.
To give myself a chance of
getting some way through the game, I'm allowed to know the solution to the day's Wordle and can
use it to play which words to use to get as many useful key presses as I can. Each day's video
is posted a day late to avoid spoiling Wordle for anyone still playing it.
Just over a week after starting, I'd pressed J and K enough to get
through the introduction and started walking around. After another ten days,
I picked Bulbasaur to be my starter pokémon then
promptly started a ten day long battle against my rival.
Probably the best day so far was day 46, when I
managed to find words to attack and knock out a pidgey, get thorough the post-battle text, then
walk four steps.
The full game so far is on this YouTube playlist.
So far, I've been playing for 53 days and have got about a third of the way along Route 1.
The current Pokémon Blue
speedrun record did this in 2 minutes and 51 seconds and went on to complete the game in 1 hour and 43 minutes.
Using this as a rough estimate of the proportion of the game completed, it looks like it'll take
around 5 and a quarter years to complete Pokémon Wordle. See you on Victory Road in May
2031...
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2022-10-27
It's a while since I've put a new blog post here. This is partly because I've been busy working on other exciting maths projects. One of these exciting projects
is happening tomorrow: the 24 Hour Maths Game Show.
Two years ago, I helped run the 24 Hour Maths Magic Show. Two years on, we've decided to do it again, but this time
the show will feature 24 hours of content about games, including mathematical game shows, game theory, board games, and video games. The full schedule for the show is
at 24hourmaths.com/gameshow, and you can watch it for free on YouTube.
If for some reason you want to just watch the bits featuring me, I'll be on the show doing the following (all times in BST/UTC+1):
- From 7pm on Friday, I'll be on the stream with the rest of the team opening the show
- From 7:30pm on Friday, I'll be chatting to James Grime about adventure game books
- From 1:30am on Saturday, I'll be talking with Katie Steckles about Pac-Man
- From 10:30am on Saturday, I'll be hosting The Unbelievable Proof, a panel game where the contestant present two-minute lectures that are entirely false except for five hidden truths, while the other contestants try to spot the truths
- From 5pm on Saturday, I'll be hosting Jeopardy! with Adam Townsend
- From 6pm on Saturday, I'll be reacting to tasks people have been attempting during the Taskmathster segment
I'd recommend watching as much of the show as you can; the whole thing is going to be amazing. A recording of the whole thing will be available afterwards if you can't stay away for the whole lot.
The show is raising money for four excellent charities, so throw some money their way if you enjoy the show.
After you've watched the show, keep an eye out for the next issue of Chalkdust, which is due out in the next few weeks. And it's not long until there'll be a post here about this year's Advent calendar...
Edit: Added links to watch recordings of each segment.
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