I Can't Quit You, Semantle, You Frustrating Pest
My grandma got me into crossword puzzles from a young age, and since then I have loved any and all word games. Naturally, I was immediately addicted to Wordle (I could talk at you for easily 30 minutes about how prioritizing vowels is an awful strategy) and I play it every morning before I get out of bed. Not to brag (jk, I’m bragging) but I am very good at Wordle, and the fact that I play it first thing in the morning, still a little asleep, means that I typically have no memory of it later on in the day. I could not tell you what the Wordle word was today — I spent two minutes on it before I had even really woken up. The word game that haunts me, that makes me feel like I’m going to lose my mind, yet I can’t wait to play it again tomorrow, is Semantle.
There have been countless variations on Wordle in the past few months, and there’s probably one for your particular interests. I tried a few, but Semantle is the only one that’s stuck. It’s actually very UN-like Wordle, and maybe that’s Semantle’s appeal. Here’s a breakdown of how Semantle works, as explained by Semantle:
If that sounds confusing, you’re right. Semantle is the kind of game that is very hard to explain, but once you get it, you’ve got it, and it seems easy. Here’s a few screenshots of a recent game, with some explanation:
The secret word was “gathering”
Going across from left to right, you have the number my guess is, the word I guessed, the similarity to the secret word, and if the word is the the top 1000 similar words, a green bar illustrating how close it is. My goal is to get the green bar to show up before 100 guesses. If I get to 100 guesses and there is still no guess within 1000, ie has a green bar, then I allow myself to go to r/Semantle for a hint. Semantle updates at 17:00 wherever you are, and there are people posting hints on Reddit at like, 17:10. It’s incredibly helpful without being super easy, basically giveaway hints (those get deleted). I also love the Semantle subreddit as a way to find out how others got to the secret word. Players will post, “I was on the politics track” or “I followed sports and then switched to weather” and sometimes I have NO IDEA what they mean, but I want to try and figure it out. (If you didn’t already realize Semantle is for dweebs, now you know.)
I always start with basic, general terms: Person, place, music, art, sport, craft, work… Then I follow whatever thread is ranked highest, even if nothing is in the top 1000. Here’s an example, with my guesses in the order I guessed them
Because I got 11.59 with “sport” and that was the highest so far, I followed that route. Then on guess 15 “win” raised my highest guess to 14.43, so I followed that and guessed a lot of words I considered similar to “win.” I finally hit green with “enjoy” at guess 25, and followed that route, getting more and more green guesses as I went along. The secret word this time was “grateful.” Sometimes you think the secret word is completely unrelated to the high ranking words you’ve guessed. Sometimes you understand, but only after you’ve found the secret word after 500 guesses. The most infuriating game I’ve played so far was when the secret word was pork. Here’s a screenshot of that game with the guesses blurred out (because I posted it on Twitter)
My 19th guess was beef, and it was 999/1000. All those other guesses in the 900s? Beef related words. Cow, ground, chuck, meat. When the result is ???? that means you guessed a word that would rank super high, but it’s not in the word list. It’s basically saying, “Wow! That’s a REALLY good guess we didn’t’ even think of! Still not the secret word though.” My ???? guesses were other beef words like wagyu and sirloin. I was going full force on the beef track. NEVER did I think the word was PORK. PORK??? I’m still mad.
But it’s that kind of frustration that keeps me coming back to Semantle every single day at 5pm. I am obsessed. As one Redditor put it…
