Analysis

Posted: 6 Feb 2022 by Codehead
6 minute read

Intro

Following on from breaking Wordle in my earlier post, I decided to use the data extracted from the app to try and work out the best starting words for the game.

I’ve seen a few articles about people’s chosen starter which is often based on vowel-heavy words. However, I have all the solutions and the valid words, so I can run some analysis and select a statistically accurate answer rather than guessing a word.

There is a lot of analysis, charts and statistical calculation below. The idea is to walk through the process so you understand why the words were selected. However, if you just want the results, scroll to the bottom of the page.

Facts and Figures

The solution list contains 2315 words. This means that Wordle has enough daily answers to run until Oct 21, 2027. The recent news that the game has been bought by the New York Times had people rushing to save a local copy of the game to play for free ‘forever’. Looks like we only have 5 years worth of games unless the answer list is extended.

The valid word list is much bigger at 10657 words. Some of the entries are pretty bizarre, so it wouldn’t be a good idea to use those as an extended solution list. However, if this was the answer list, the game could run until Aug 23, 2050. Only really an option if you’re happy with answers like: “aiyee”, “akkas”, “buhls”, “dzhos” and “thagi”.

Intro

The year is 2022 and EVERYONE is playing Wordle.

Wordle is a fun little word game that anyone can pick up and play. Six guesses to find a five letter word. It is surprisingly addictive.

However, after solving the daily puzzle I found I had to wait 24 hours for the next one. Like any self respecting hacker I wasn’t having that so I smashed F12 to have a dig around in the guts of the game.

TL:DR

Command Files allow you to start up gdb in a way that saves you typing the same commands over and over, even doing some of the ‘driving’ for you. I’m not suggesting that this is the best way to use gdb but I found it really helpful and I saved a bunch of time. I’m blogging it for my own reference and to help others find a lesser known, but very useful feature of the tool.

Background

While working on the SLAE64 course assessments, I found myself jumping in and out of gdb a lot. Constantly rebuilding and refining my shellcode test binaries meant that I ended up in constant cycle of doing a whole heap of setup in gdb to get things the way I wanted them, only to spend a few seconds debugging the target, then quitting, tweaking the code, rebuilding and repeating the whole process again.

I’m not a great typist, but I keyed in this sequence so many times that I could probably do it in my sleep:

layout asm
layout reg
break _start
run

There has to be a better way.