Semantle 8

[ElegantlyTouched]

As requested! A place to scream, rant, and help each other with this wonderful / bloody awful game (delete as appropriate!).

Semantle can be found here.

Previous thread here.

Yay!

Stuck and struggling. 981, 941,920 are my highest. Am I on the right track please?

Needed hints today!

I solved Semantle #68 in 106 guesses. My first guess had a similarity of 12.97. My first word in the top 1000 was at guess #12. My penultimate guess had a similarity of 15.84. semantle.novalis.org/

@rumred focus on what may cause 981 941, maybe 920

@Wallawallakoala thanks.
Got it. Was going down the wrong route. As per fucking usual

I do that all the time it depends on what greens you get!

I still don't really understand how the similarity/green grading thing works. So many of the high scoring greens today were opposites!

@BIWI

I still don't really understand how the similarity/green grading thing works. So many of the high scoring greens today were opposites!

I think it's more word association than synonyms.

But it's highly debatable that some of the green words have any kind of association with the secret word!

I'm obviously not going to give away the secret word, but - for example - 85 was 'thumping', 110 was 'sheepishly', 137 was 'nosedive'.

@BIWI

I still don't really understand how the similarity/green grading thing works. So many of the high scoring greens today were opposites!

From a quick skim of the article linked in the FAQ, I think one way of thinking about it would be:the underlying technology scores the words as vectors (which you can think of as relative semantic locations). While "synonym" and "antonym" feel as far away from each other as possible, from a third guess word location they're likely each about as far away from it as the other, hence the similarity in ranking.

I understand all those words individually @EntropyBanana. Just put together I haven't a clue

I'm not goading. Just sometimes I end up going down some really obscure avenues and really reaching into the depths of my brain (which I quite enjoy), try out some very rare/unusual words - only to discover the word we're looking for is really banal.

@BIWI think of it the same way as 1980 being the same distance away from 2021 as it is from 1939 (and cry)

Isn’t it to do with how often the words appear together in print. So they aren’t nec synonyms (although often are), rather words that often get printed in the same sentences/articles? Or am I completely wrong?

@BIWI

I understand all those words individually *@EntropyBanana*. Just put together I haven't a clue

It is definitely on the boggling side. I don't understand everything in the article by any means.

I have done a rubbish picture of how it seems to work to me.

First we have dark and light - they are opposites and far from each other. It feels like if we find one, we shouldn't find another.

But if we look at them from the perspective of a third word, they are both in the mix. Light is probably going to be closer than dark to daytime, but they're both there (daytime is when it's not dark, or it gets dark when daytime ends).

The final bit is a bunch of words that might relate to daytime but which aren't direct synonyms. The source of the scoring used for the game is an analysis of US news stories. The analysis looks at which words tend to crop up around each other in those contexts. I'm not sure this completely explains some of the bizarre words we see, mind.

This is how it fees like it works, to me. But what do I know, it took me 267 guesses today

@Florador it's still a good brain workout even if you're disappointed that it's basic.

Does anyone remember the website where you could chat to an AI to teach them English? I loved that.

@JaneJeffer it totally is! I still love the challenge. So much better than Wordle (although I play that too).

@Florador

I'm not goading. Just sometimes I end up going down some really obscure avenues and really reaching into the depths of my brain (which I quite enjoy), try out some very rare/unusual words - only to discover the word we're looking for is really banal.

The solution words are all taken from a list of the 5000 commonest. So they won't be obscure ones. However when probing the 'word space', some of the the connections might be via less common ones I suppose.

Can't seem to get past 876... is that a helpful one at all?!

@ErrolTheDragon I see! I haven't really looked into how it all works in the background. That's interesting. Let's see how tomorrow's goes

Some of the words I have no clue what they mean though. Someone here the other day had got loads of strange words and myself and another poster were agog!

@youvegottenminuteslynn I didn't have 876 but had 877 and it took me another 100 guesses to get to 1000!!

[quote Florador]@youvegottenminuteslynn I didn't have 876 but had 877 and it took me another 100 guesses to get to 1000!! [/quote]
I'm only on guess 49 at the moment but can't get past 876 have a feeling I'm going to be stuck here for aaaages!

Oh thank fuck that’s over. My brain is addled, I thought I’d never get there.

@youvegottenminuteslynn would you like a clue involving 876?