The question was shared on Instagram by the handle @maths.puzzles__. The puzzle states, "Only 2% of students solved this question. 5+3+2= 151022, 9+2+4= 183652, 8+6+3= 482466, 5+4+5= 202541 Then 7+2+5 =?"
Showing posts with label Maths and Puzzles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maths and Puzzles. Show all posts
Friday, October 20, 2023
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
Solving Wordle
The 2nd word choice is interesting. The last letter after N can be Y, K, D, T, O (RHYNO). So I chose DORKY.
The solution might have K at the end. Possible words are BREAK, BLEAK, FREAK, WREAK. So I chose FRILL.
This again is another nice one.
L, P, H are letters that can follow the starting S. Hence ALEPH. Sure enough it was solved in 3 attempts!
Additional reading
- https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2022/12/my-personal-worldle-copy.html
- https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2023/01/wordle-and-dumb-charades.html
- Wordle starting word: https://www.makeuseof.com/best-wordle-starter-words/. TRAIN, CLOSE use all the top 10 letters. SALET is best according to MIT: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/14/this-is-the-best-wordle-starting-word-according-to-mit-researchers.html
- https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2022/03/tough-interesting-wordle.html
- NY Times wordle bot: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/17/upshot/wordle-wordlebot-new.html
Sunday, January 29, 2023
If Filter In Google Sheets Isn't Working
Sometimes the filter doesn't work in Google sheets in Android. On clicking the inverted triangle icon filter, nothing is displayed. I don't know why it happens.
Here is a simple workaround.
Take a copy of file before starting
- Create new sheet in the original file
- Create working filter
- Copy few rows and confirm working filter
- Change references to new sheet and confirm vlookup in referencing sheet is working
- Copy rest of rows to new sheet and modify references in referencing sheet to new sheet
- Delete old sheet where filter is not working
- Rename new sheet
- Confirm everything ok
Tuesday, January 17, 2023
Wordle And Dumb Charades
Dumb Charades (DS) and wordle are both popular games.
Both are guessing games. In DS you have to guess the name of something (a movie typically) and in wordle, a 5 letter word. The former is limited by time (so many minutes allowed to come up with the right answer) and latter by number of attempts (6).
The solution is DS can consist of multiple words (as in the name of a movie "Maid in Manhattan")) while the solution in wordle is always a single 5 letter word.
In both games the other party (another team) responds to your guesses in terms of how close or far you are from the answer. The response in DS is a little subjective while in wordle the response is more structured in terms of yellows and greens. DS also has a GREEN, YELLOW, GREY kinda response system.
Though wordle is typically a solo game it can very well be a two player game, though with only one people on each team. DS usually has more than 1 player on each side.
In both games the player converges to a solution, from having no clue about it initially to making large jumps towards the solution with each guess.
In both games the ingenuity of the guesses is a major factor.
Both games are intellectual (despite wordle needing a paper and a pencil or a web page) unlike video games.
Both are quite addictive!
Additional reading
https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2022/12/my-personal-worldle-copy.html
Monday, December 12, 2022
My Personal Worldle Copy
I created my personal copy of wordle. Basically it's the same as the original one except that I can play multiple times in a day. And it's a single user version. I have a streak that's 100+ days long.
It started off with me trying to figure out the best starting word. I wasn't happy with ADIEU, LEAST etc. Knowing that A or E is yellow doesn't really help me. A GREEN helps a lot more than a YELLOW.
Apparently a paper authored by researchers at MIT says that the best starting word is SALET. My own favourite was SLATE. Though both have the same set of 5 letters one of them could be better than tha other since the letter order could change a yellow to a green or vice versa.
And I was more into trying to find out whether the solution has letters like F, L, C, P etc which are less frequent. Knowing that the solution has these rarer words is a lot of help even if they are less likely to be there in the solution than knowing that the solution has E, S, A etc.
Ideally one should be able to solve a wordle in 3 steps or guesses. Solving in 1 or even 2 steps is sheer luck. With my starting words I still take 4 guesses, so it's not a great way!.
Coming to my personal wordle, Cell F15 throws up a random number which I use and enter in cell F2 to pick out a 5 letter word (either from past solutions or from my master list of 5 letter words depending on whether the value in cell G2 is 1 or 2).
Column R is where I enter my guesses. Column O tells me whether the guess is ok or Bad. "Bad" is when a wrong letter is used or a letter is placed in a wrong position. For example, if I know that F isn't there in the solution and I use F in a subsequent step then the rule engine would display "Bad". If everything is fine, OK is displayed. There are a bunch of standard rules built into the rule engine. I handle issues with multiple occurrences of a letter.
I then decide whether to change the guess or go ahead with the current guess. I do the latter by typing Y in column Q. Once I type Y, my guess is processed and then color coded in columns H-L as well as in the "keyboard" below. The keyboard is display only. You can't use it to type unlike in the NYT website.
Cells BE3-BI8 tell me, for each letter in the guess, how many other words can be formed having all other letters the same. For example in LUNCH, for L I enumerate how many words such as BUNCH, HUNCH exist in the master list.
In cells BK3-BO8, I show how often a letter in the guess comes in that position. For example, L occurs 15% times in the 1st position among all words having L.
Once the guess is entered, I set all the GREEN, YELLOW and GREY letters in cells BE10 to BI14. Cell R13 tells me how many words match these conditions. Smaller the number, closer I am to the solution!. Cell R13 gives the result set in % form.
If I am guessing a word outside of my spreadsheet (for example, i am playing in a different site) and I know some GREEN, YELLOW, GREY data for the word, I enter those letters in cells BK11-BO11 (GREEN here). The yellow letters and grey letters are entered in cells BK16, BL16, respectively. I also set the value in cell in BJ10 to 2 to inform my spreadsheet that GREEN, YELLOW, GREY data is not to be determined based on internal solution but that these days are entered manually. Cells Q13, R13 give me an indication of the % and number of words in my master list that match the criteria.
The icing on the cake are the cells BM16, BN16. If I enter a value 1 in BM16, cell BN16 will display the 1st word in the internal dictionary which exactly matches the GREEN, YELLOW GREY letters entered (if playing on an external site) or determined (if playing within the spreadsheet with the spreadsheet choosing a random word). If I enter 2 in BM16, the next cell will display the 2nd word that matches the criteria.
Cell BO18 is a check number for internal purpose.
Since the solution is picked at random and since there are hundreds of words in the master list to pick from I really don't know which word is the solution in the current game. This ensures fun!
In the final version, i incorporated the ability to arrive at the guesses and ultimately the solution by just entering the GYG details of each guess. A bit of a triumph!
Friday, March 18, 2022
Tough, Interesting Wordle
The solution includes a guess TUTOR which definitely would not be the right word.
The one below was a tough SOB.
What the heck is a flume
This wasn't a difficult word. But it became tricky because of the offbeat first guess.
A fairly simple word but made difficult because of a different kinda initial guess.
The one below started with an offbeat guess and found the solution in the 3rd guess
Biome??
The starting word and the final solution are both!!!
What is a GOLEM??
Interesting guesses leading to a quick solution!
Just trying to see how much a "bad" initial affects the ease of getting a solution.
MOULT??
.
That was interesting. 2 guesses were completely wrong. No letter correct.
That took some time and a lot of stress
This was a little strange, Y coming in place of a vowel.
That was tough.
Wow. Making the final guess was tough.
Oh my. That made me sweat. For the 6th word, the penultimate guess was EXIDE. Then I got the answer
This was tricky during the 4th, 5th and last guesses.
Wow, that was a word difficult to guess. Just made it in the last attempt.
Couldn't get this one!
Goddamn Vignesh, this was tough
For the last attempt I had to Google for 5 letter words ending in KO
That was great. What the heck is CACAO?
I started with all offbeat word again. And for the third word I had to Google for words starting with hut! The wordle bot rated my skill level 50/100 and luck 99/100. Usually my luck score is very low but today I got lucky!
Had to Google to find the last word (the answer!)
That was interesting. The first two guesses together gave a single yellow.
Phew
That was great!
This was interesting. The 3rd and 4th guesses were..
Aphid?? Had to Google the last guess.
Had to Google the last guess again!
This was neat.
A little strange, my guesses
I had to Google for the last guess
NERDY was a damned good and lucky guess.
I had to Google for the 5th and 6th guesses. But the 6th turned out to be an embarrassment.
This was nice.
For the 5th guess, I figured I couldn't be the last letter. So it has to be the 1st. Then N had to be the 2nd. Hence INE were the starting letters. Only INEPT, INERT were possible.
Additional reading
Bumblebee without using any hints. Of course I checked the number of words and points needed to reach queen bee
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