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Try Finding “Worldle” on Google

6 points by pcurve ↗ HN
A friend told me about a map game called "Worldle" so I googled it. No dice. I tried "Worldle map game". Tried in Incognito mode. Even "Wordle reddit" didn't work.

So I went to Duck.com and Bing.com Both pointed to the right site. https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/

Sigh.

6 comments

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mikebonnell
When I search Worldle, Google search returns Wordle, but below it shows: "Showing results for wordle. Search instead for worldle" If I click the link for "worldle" then the right site is the top hit. Maybe an overly greedy algorithm to try and prevent folks from going to scammy sites.
shoo
same feature is often very helpful when you tyop or missspell a word.

Some google system will be crunching the odds on

  P(X=wordle | Y=worldle) / P(X=worldle | Y=worldle)
where

  Y := observed sequence of characters the user typed in the box
  X := user's intended search term (unobserved)
if we set priors on the intended search term from observed frequency in pages indexed by google, we get something like

  P(X=wordle) : 1.4e9 / Z
  P(X=worldle): 3.2e6 / Z
where Z is the number of words in the internet.

Bayes theorem gives

  P(X=wordle | Y=worldle)         P(Y=worldle | X=wordle) P(X=wordle)
  -----------------------    =    ----------------------------------
  P(X=worldle | Y=worldle)        P(Y=worldle | X=worldle) P(X=worldle)
So if there's a 1/400 or higher chance that a user accidentally adds an extra L when trying to key in "wordle", and hits enter anyway, then the expression on the right will evaluate to > 1 which means we should infer the user actually meant X="wordle" even though they keyed in Y="worldle"
anon2020dot00
It works exactly as intended, just click on the show results for worldle instead.
qualudeheart
Google search has been getting worse for years. I might move to Brave search or Bing.

Google dorks and search operators are being depreciated because Google doesn’t want users with agency. Technically informed people shouldn’t use it.

ColinHayhurst
If you hit the "Search instead for worldle" it works. Still NYT are smiling at the "wisdom" of Google.