Secondly, everyone keeps mentioning (repeating?...) about this famous TV show in the UK; I have never heard of it until december. Reading the gameplay of the show on Wikipedia.... it sounds like an almost entirely different game, aside from the fact it (sometimes!) involves a 5 letter word, and you have to pick letters. Mastermind (the game), is so much closer
There is/was a Dutch TV show called Lingo that is based on the same game and I'd expect there to be more such shows.
Only variations the TV show has is the 6 word version on Saturday and some comedians made a sketch with a 19 letter version: words like "Marshallplanachtige" [0]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7CR1v1fKW0
EDIT: of course there's also this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7qxpAUKy4c in which some dude tries to not say a word he probably saw in a porno but does have to say it of course so mispronounces.
In the Dutch version of Lingo (a game show which has been televised for over thirty years now that's basically Wordle but in more and different configurations) there was an episode where two brothers memorized an optimized set of words for determining letters and their positions. One of them wrote a write-up here: https://vincenttunru.com/hacking-a-gameshow/
In the show, you usually get one letter for free in the six letter words so there's a better word set available with more words to remember. Despite this, the episode was quite boring to watch because the optimized guessing strategy takes all the fun out of the game by guessing the same words every day.
A similar thing happened in the Netherlands. The TV show is called Lingo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(Dutch_game_show)), it uses 5-letter words and you get the first letter for free. The guy who more or less beat it wrote a blog post about it: https://vincenttunru.com/hacking-a-gameshow/
The game's great but I'm puzzled why no one mentions that this is a verbatim copy of Lingo, a 1987 tv show that's been adapted in many countries. I used to watch this in France where it was very successful. Once people got too good at 5-letter words, they ran 6, then 7, and finally 8 letters.
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That's Lingo, not Wordle.
Secondly, everyone keeps mentioning (repeating?...) about this famous TV show in the UK; I have never heard of it until december. Reading the gameplay of the show on Wikipedia.... it sounds like an almost entirely different game, aside from the fact it (sometimes!) involves a 5 letter word, and you have to pick letters. Mastermind (the game), is so much closer
Did you actually see the tv show?
There's a TV show in the UK at least called Lingo that predates it by several years. It's literally the exact same game.
But full credit to Wordle's creator, the one word a day and social media sharing stuff is the real secret sauce.
There is/was a Dutch TV show called Lingo that is based on the same game and I'd expect there to be more such shows.
Only variations the TV show has is the 6 word version on Saturday and some comedians made a sketch with a 19 letter version: words like "Marshallplanachtige" [0]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7CR1v1fKW0
EDIT: of course there's also this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7qxpAUKy4c in which some dude tries to not say a word he probably saw in a porno but does have to say it of course so mispronounces.
In the Dutch version of Lingo (a game show which has been televised for over thirty years now that's basically Wordle but in more and different configurations) there was an episode where two brothers memorized an optimized set of words for determining letters and their positions. One of them wrote a write-up here: https://vincenttunru.com/hacking-a-gameshow/
In the show, you usually get one letter for free in the six letter words so there's a better word set available with more words to remember. Despite this, the episode was quite boring to watch because the optimized guessing strategy takes all the fun out of the game by guessing the same words every day.
A similar thing happened in the Netherlands. The TV show is called Lingo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(Dutch_game_show)), it uses 5-letter words and you get the first letter for free. The guy who more or less beat it wrote a blog post about it: https://vincenttunru.com/hacking-a-gameshow/
The game's great but I'm puzzled why no one mentions that this is a verbatim copy of Lingo, a 1987 tv show that's been adapted in many countries. I used to watch this in France where it was very successful. Once people got too good at 5-letter words, they ran 6, then 7, and finally 8 letters.
A shorter version with pictures is available in this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/VincentTunru/status/1205527364739981312
Feel free to ask me anything!
Edit: Ah, and for Dutch people, the first actual episode can be viewed here: https://www.sbs6.nl/programmas/lingo/videos/Vk9EpXSlwas/lingo/