Took me 16 as well. I'll be curious to try this a few more times to see if it's possible to improve on that number in any meaningful way.

Assuming you're using binary searching (which is optimal), it takes on average log2(n) steps to find an item in a sorted list of n items. Assuming a word list somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 words (as a reference Wordle accepts as possible answers something like 10,000-12,000 words), then an optimal search will take 12-14-ish steps, on average.

Not particularly helpful for any given day, but that's the overall ballpark.

Also 16. I think I could have improved by 1 with experience (forgetting about huge chunks of words of a certain pattern) and improving by another 1 by not "giving up" at the end (surely there are no more words I can think of beginning with...).

The math also checks out- the fastest search is a binary search and 2^14 is 16384 words. I think they would only use common English words so tens of thousands makes sense to me. As a comparison, Wordle uses a little over 2000 words, but those are limited to only 5 letter words.

EDIT: Zachary commented Wordle accepts 12000 words (my 2000 are the answers only). I'd say 12000 is a better number to use, which increases my estimate by a bit- I'd guess the total wordlist is 2^15 or more likely 2^16 words. So 16 should be the maximum (some days you'll get there more quickly).

13 guesses. That was surprisingly fun! After 2 or 3 turns, I thought of this semi-related video (which, weirdly, I think about regularly). I wonder what the most efficient strategy is here.

Like git bisect, but for words! My score was 8, but I sweated it: over 3 minutes. I think both scores might be interesting for what they reveal about puzzle-solving personalities.

I got 16 but I wasn't very strategic and made one dumb mistake near the start. I'm going to try it for a few days and see if it stays fun.

Speaking of new word puzzles. Give Gisnep a try. You guess the quote and the quote source.

http://gisnep.com

14.

It took me 20. 😦

Also 16! Wild.

11. 3m 25s.

16 :-)

I got it in 9 but I think knowing 16 was a common number might have influenced my first guess?

🧩 Puzzle #429

🤔 9 guesses

⏱️ 1m 39s

🔗 alphaguess.com

🧩 Puzzle #429
🤔 15 guesses
⏱️ 8m 23s

Interesting idea, could be much better design wise, and find a way to help with the alphabet. Too much of the ABC song going through my head 😝

🧩 Puzzle #429

🤔 12 guesses

⏱️ 3m 42s

🔗 alphaguess.com

🧩 Puzzle #429

🤔 15 guesses

⏱️ 6m 23s

🔗 alphaguess.com

I believe it said you must use Scrabble words, which could be up to ~280,000 possibilities?

11 for me with one unnecessary guess (already ruled out). 2 min 55 seconds. That was fun!

12! Too fun! Reminds me of a game my son and husband used to play called "Guess my number" between 1 and 1,000,000 - you had to respond with uber far, super far, very far, close or something like that

This is nearly identical to a game called Guess My Word that launched in April 2019, which was itself inspired by a daily web game on Simbase.org that dates back to at least 2015.

My wife and I have played this game for years on road trips. Good fun.

In before the NYT buys this one, too.

As Andy mentioned, this game is identical to Guess My Word with one notable exception: no public leaderboard. The top of the leaderboard at Guess My Word is your usual mix of exploits and cheats but below that group you get to see the truly weird ways people free associate words. some guess paths truly read like poetry and some will make you literally LOL.

The words have mostly started with 's', which is making the game decidedly less fun.