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Well, Mastermind has 6 colors and 4 positions; Wordle has 26 letters and 5 positions. So at first it seems a larger solution space.

In Mastermind all feasible candidates are equiprobable (assuming the cluegiver isn't biased), but in Wordle we can use external statistical information (how likely is 'Y' to be letter #2? any letter?). Since Wordle uses a dictionary of 2331 possible words + 10657 additional words that can be used as guesses (so 12966 words in total). Out of a theoretical total of 4K five-letter English words, or 26P5 = 65780 five-letter permutations of letters (most gibberish). As such, you can often still gain information from trying a candidate word which you know cannot be the solution word (e.g. one letter known to be wrong position or missing).


You’re supposed to play on hard mode where it prevents you from playing a word that cannot be the solution.

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