58 lines
1.9 KiB
YAML
58 lines
1.9 KiB
YAML
date: 2022-07-11
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title: 'Cheating at Wordle with grep'
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tags:
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- linux
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---
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I usually try to make a good effort at
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[Wordle](https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html), but sometimes I get
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down to the last one or two chances and need some help. Instead of anything
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fancy-pants, I usually turn to a dictionary file and my friend, `grep`.
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So, first thing's first, you need a dictionary file, which is just a file with
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a bunch of words one-per-line. These are usually found in `/usr/share/dict`. I
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happen to have `cracklib-small` on my machine so we'll use that.
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First, you'll want to get all the five-letter words out of the file. I use the
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regex `^\w{5}$`, which is `^` for the start of the line, `\w` for an
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alphanumeric character, `{5}` saying that there are 5 of them, and `$` for the
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end of the line. The beginning and end of line markers are important, otherwise
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you'll get words that contain 5 or more letters.
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```
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grep -E '^\w{5}$' /usr/share/dict/cracklib-small
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```
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At this point, I've already made some guesses and have a few letters in the
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right spot, and some letters which are correct but in the wrong spot. We'll
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bucket these into two `grep`s.
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For letters in the right spot, I stick those right into a regex. For example,
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let's say I know the word starts with 'f' and 'a':
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```
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grep -E 'fa\w\w\w'
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```
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For the right letters in the wrong spot, I simply use the letter as the regex.
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If I have multiple letters, I can chain those together by piping grep like so:
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```
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grep s | grep t
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```
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So chaining them all together:
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```
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$ grep -E '^\w{5}$' /usr/share/dict/cracklib-small \
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| grep -e 'fa\w\w\w' \
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| grep s | grep t
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facts
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fasts
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fates
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faust
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```
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You could eliminate words that have letters you've already eliminiated by
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chaining `grep -v <letter>` to the end, but I find that pretty cumbersome.
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There's only a handful of possible words at this point, so I think it's easier
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to just remove them in my head.
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