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Show HN: A simple Wordle clone in 60 lines, using Hyperscript (arhamjain.com)

111 points by ajusa ↗ HN
Hello HN! I've been playing a lot with https://hyperscript.org/ recently (not to be confused with the other hyperhype hyperscript). I threw together a quick Wordle clone in an evening to see what it would look like using this language. The main functionality that is missing is checking for invalid words. The word dictionary is also very small, so it's very easy.

The goal here wasn't really to create a good version of Wordle, it was to build 80% of Wordle in a different language to see what it looks like. Turns out, it looks pretty good! Stuff like using CSS rule precedence to highlight the squares, CSS selectors to figure out which key to highlight, and using the DOM to keep state are all really natural in Hyperscript. I highly suggest going to the site and viewing the source!

52 comments

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jaidhyani
This is awesome, but there's a slight bug in this implementation: Wordle won't count additional instances of a letter as wrong-position, it'll just flag them as wrong. For example, if the word is TRACE, and I guess TRACT, the first T will be green, but the second T should be black, not yellow. In this implementation, at the moment, TRACT would return GGGGY, but in Wordle it would be GGGGB.

I actually made the same mistake in a Wordle solver I was writing recently - it's easy to miss, since Wordle doesn't make this explicit and you have to infer it yourself.

ajusa
Oh wow, I never noticed that myself. I'll fix it once I'm at my computer, thanks for pointing it out! The fix will probably be something like

    if letter not in (.bg-warning in first .guess).innerText then add .bg-warning
Haven't tested as I'm on my phone, but seems like a simple enough fix.
anonymoushn
I don't think it's that simple. For HOUSE, guessing BEERS should get you WYWYW
Aethylia
I have been trying to figure this out myself. The algorithm I'm using is to colour yellow only if the count of that letter before that occurance in the guess, is less than the count of that letter in the target word.
joeframbach
Looks good, here are some test cases off the top of my head.

guess: "SASSY", target: "BRASS", expect either "YYBGB" or "BYYGB". I believe your algorithm would return "YYYGB".

guess: "BRASS", target: "SASSY", expect "BBYGY"

guess: "ASSET", target: "BRASS", expect "YYYBB"

guess: "BRASS", target: "ASSET", expect "BBYYY"

xmonkee
Haha, I made the exact same mistake in my wordle solver. Well, not a mistake since that's what the worlde docs say.
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martini333
Does not check for real words.
e67f70028a46fba
“The goal here wasn't really to create a good version of Wordle, it was to build 80% of Wordle in a different language to see what it looks like.”
ajusa
Yup, exactly. I've considered adding a bloom filter check for words but I've accomplished what I wanted to try out. Maybe if I'm ever interested in the future!

It'd be very easy to check against just a list of words, but that'd require more storage and be slower than a bloom filter.

d--b
Wow, first time I see hyperscript. It is so remote from what I am used to, I have no idea how to read the code in details, but what it does is completely self-explanatory.
dane-pgp
This isn't just a beautiful demonstration of Hyperscript, it could also be a great introduction to what it can be like when writing for the web platform, or to coding in general. Well done!
aldebran
I found a bug. When there is a repeated character in the guess but not in the word, you’re given an incorrect color key.

E.g. Word was GROUP I guessed SPOON Output was green O at location 3 and yellow at 4. Happened for a couple more guesses making me think there is another O eventually to realize there are no more spots and it’s a bug.

ajusa
Sorry for that (and thanks to all the folks that pointed out the word matching code was wrong). I've pushed an updated version, it's 63 lines now.

Turns out, HN finds and reports bugs much faster than family and friends :)

joeframbach
wordle-play.com fails the test. wordlegame.org passes. Implementations disagree, but I agree with how you are defining it should work.
huhtenberg
Not take away from the brevity of the code, but these 60 lines translate into 168KB of JavaScript.
dane-pgp
Wait until you find out how big the browser that runs that code is!
antihero
Do you download the browser on every request?

Of course 168kB is still nothing but your comparison is flawed.

recursivedoubts
hyperscript is ~22k gziped and cached after the first request

the size is not an issue

now, the runtime on the other hand...

skavi
wait is this not being compiled to js?
ivanbakel
This is a blithe statement - the browser isn't downloaded whenever a user navigates to the page. 1/6th of a MB for a page this simple is pretty substantial.
irq-1
_hyperscript_web.min.js is 84.1 KiB (86,093 bytes) and when zipped it's 22.1 KiB (22,641 bytes)
ajusa
Looks like they doubled the size by accident, in the network debugger the first is a 302 that resolves to the actual file. It shows 84kb twice because of that.
jFriedensreich
every key press takes 4 seconds to update the ui, if this is supposed to be a showcase for hyperscript, its not doing too well.
recursivedoubts
what machine/browser are you on?

the hyperscript runtime is defintely... pedestrian

jFriedensreich
i tried on ios safari, which is admittedly not a great browser
ajusa
Yeah, that must be a Safari thing. I pulled out my Nexus 5 (circa 2013) and everything feels instant. I don't have any working iOS devices lying around to test on unfortunately.
superlopuh
My Firefox on specced out Intel MBP lags noticeably
jFriedensreich
if it helps for reproducing: i pressed keys too fast wich was interpreted as a double tap in safari and triggered a zoom in. After zooming back to normal, the lag was even worse.
pygy_
Hyperscript already has an established meaning in this space, as a pure JS-based syntax alternative to JSX.

See https://github.com/hyperhype/hyperscript and all its descendants, like Mithril, HyperApp or Sinuous.

Could you please think of another name ?

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anentropic
It seems to be this one:

https://github.com/bigskysoftware/_hyperscript

https://hyperscript.org/

but not sure it's anything to do with the OP though

pygy_
Look at the source, it is written with that language/framework.

I seems they want to pull a Substack. Color me unimpressed.

speg
He used the framework, not named it.
pygy_
Oh, my bad... Sorry for the noise.

@dang if you happen to read this, can you hide/flag the thread ?

olah_1
> build 80% of Wordle in a different language

I have been trying to do the same thing! I was looking for projects on github that I could adapt to a new language. Sadly, most of them require a server. It seemed to me that this game could pretty easily just run on the client alone.

I will dig into yours and see how it can be adapted to different languages too :)

mcintyre1994
I think wordle does just run indefinitely on the client. It has a word list in its JS which has the list of winning words in order, so you can see the upcoming ones. And the current word is somewhere in localstorage as well. Obviously not much fun if you poke around there too much, but my guess is it just checks the current date and indexes the words array and sets all the state from there.
aloknnikhil
On Safari on iOS, at least, typing fast will accidentally zoom into that part of the page instead of registering it as a character press.

But pretty neat implementation otherwise. Awesome work!

recursivedoubts
i see it slowing down on mobile safari as well

will be a great chance to optimize the hyperscript runtime for mobile

ajusa
Yep, I have the wrong meta tag I believe:

        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" />
That should fix it, I'll push a new version after fixing the word matching issue others have pointed out. I underestimated Wordle's complexity :)
tardyp
Wordle will become the new todolist
fouc
I'm confused. Hyperscript is supposed to be an alternative way to writing JSX, good for skipping the babel/transpile step. Such as the React h() function. For example:

    h('header', { id: 'my-header', className: 'header' },
      h('div', { className: 'logo' },
        h('a', { href: '/' }, 'mtsknn.fi')
      )
    )
Hyperscript.org doesn't seem to be related to this at all?

https://mtsknn.fi/blog/hyperscript-hyperior-alternative-to-j... https://dev.to/fromaline/hyperscript-the-hidden-language-of-...

speg
You are correct. Hyperscript.org is a companion library to htmx; they are totally different from the JSX Hyperscript.
stefs
it's buggy and accepts bogus words
phkahler
Doesnt validate input as words,
e12e
Nice. Is there a link to the 60 (63) lines of source code? It's not obvious on mobile at least?

Ed, nevermind:

> I highly suggest going to the site and viewing the source!

For chrome on Android:

  view-source:https://arhamjain.com/hyperwordle/
rkimb
Nice work! I spent some time playing with this today and used it to build a solver algorithm. It's a greedy search through the possible combinations that prioritizes words based on letter frequency and uses the hints provided to whittle down the search space.

Though not enforced by the Hyperwordle clone, the script plays the game on "hard" mode by default where all letter hints must be included in subsequent guesses. Ironically, this constraint made the algorithm more efficient, easy mode tends to take longer and fail more frequently!

Anyone have a better algo yet? https://github.com/rgkimball/wordlebot

_Bruno42
Doesn't work for me, getting a JS error when I'm entering a word:

hyperscript.org@0.9.4:1 'first <:empty/> in first .guess' is null