Doctor Whordle Debugging

[purplecat]

Is there is anyone out there who has played Doctor Whordle and doesn't mind risking losing their game history?

I tried to do something clever which involved displaying a message next time anyone opened up the game (to explain I'd moved from five to six letter words). Unfortunately this change runs slightly differently in the deployment environment than in the development environment. The upshot is that I can't view Doctor Whordle at all in the browser I normally play in. I've changed the code so the message no longer messes around with the local storage in the browser, but I've no way of checking if this has fixed the problem. It looks fine on every device where I've not played the game before, but I've only that one where I was keeping state and it still won't display at all on that.

So if there is anyone out there who's prepared to take the risk, can you open up Doctor Whordle - refresh the page if it isn't showing you a six letter word to guess and tell me if still works or if I seem to have broken it for existing players.

https://louiseadennis.github.io/doctor-whordle/

Comments

[shivver]

I don't play it regularly, but I have played it in the past.

In Edge (where I've played it before): I clicked on your link and it opened showing the 6-letter format, but no message appeared.

In Chrome (where I have not played it before): I copied your link to Chrome and it opened showing the 6-letter format with the "how to play" popup.

Let me know if you want me to send you the screenshots.

Note that the "how to play" popup still displays 5-letter examples. Also, the ! and i symbols in the upper right both open that same popup.

I'm going to go ask my husband (who plays it more frequently than I do, but still sparingly) to see what happens for him. Also, I'm a QA analyst by trade and am happy to continue testing for you.

[purplecat]

I realised about half an hour ago that something was off with the way it's now storing state. I've done a frantic rewind to the state it was in this morning - sounds like one of your browsers got the latest version (with both I and ! sending the same message until I get that bit fixed) while Chrome picked up the version from half an hour or so ago (you only get how to play if you've never played before - if you see that its wiped the game state somehow!). Can you hold off getting your husband to try until I've tried to repair and resend.

[shivver]

Chrome is behaving correctly - I haven't played it in Chrome before.

My husband is holding off. He's in a meeting so hadn't jumped on it right away.

[purplecat]

It's got a couple of annoying behaviours still (the win message pops up every time you switch between random and word of the day, and if you playing in random mode and refresh the browser it will clear your current attempt). But can you have a go in Chrome (not Chrome, Edge sorry - the one where you should have a history) and see if you still have your game history - complete the word (succeed for fail as you wish - fail is obviously quicker) and see if the stats modal when it pops up still records your previous games.

[shivver]

I've played through the word of the day, got the win message, and then received my stats with the previous games recorded.

I haven't started looking at the random mode yet (I am actually still at work).

The i and ! are working correctly now. Two typos: "Exclamation" has only one 'm' (I'm pretty sure that's correct for both American and British English; it's on the front page and in your change notes), and in the help popup, Wordle is spelled "Worlde".

[shivver]

Okay, I couldn't resist. I played some of the Random Word, using Chrome, where I had no previous history. I'd intended to play a couple of Random Words then play the Word of the Day, but then decided not to - I didn't want to mess up any stats you're keeping by playing the game already knowing the answer (from playing it in Edge).

The Random Word is being rerolled correctly whether I start a new game right away (using the button below the game table) or I finish the game, go to the Word of the Day, and start the Random Word from there.

Gameplay is as seamless as usual, though I object to "moved" being judged as not a word. :) (I know - tenses and plurals are often not considered valid words for this kind of game.)

Display looks great and is consistent. Do you want me to test in Firefox and Opera as well?

[shivver]

My husband confirms that he received his stats after winning today's Word of the Day. I will admit that neither of us tested that we receive stats after failing the game.

You may want to give 6-letter words another attempt. Adding a letter does increase the difficulty of the puzzle.

[purplecat]

Thanks a lot, you've been a star and I was able to go to bed last night without fretting I'd completely broken people's game experience.

I have fixed the spelling errors as well.

Byrdle (which is a choral music themed wordle clone) did 6 letters with 7 guesses and I never lost it, and only had to use the 7th row twice, and the answer was not infrequently the name of a composer I had never heard of, so I think 6 letters and 7 guesses is actually a lot easier than 5 letters and 6 guesses - my hypothesis is that having six letters per guess lets you probe through the alphabet a lot faster, even if there are more places in the word each letter could go. Anyway, that's why you don't get an extra guess with 6 letters.

I'm not tracking any stats on the game, too much like hard work. So I'd be happy to see you test in other browsers if you have the energy to do so - I have fired up Firefox and run through it once, but I've not tried in Opera.

[shivver]

You are welcome! I'm always up for helping test a friend's software, so feel free to hit me up any time.

After I made the suggestion, I thought of a number of ways that more guesses would either be easier or harder, so yes, I agree with you, staying at 6 guesses is better.

I'll take a look on Monday (when I'm on my work computer where I have FF and Opera installed). I may also throw the other analyst on my team at it - I'm training him up and this might be a nice fun exercise in analytical thinking.

[purplecat]

Thanks!

[eve11]

works for me. It says to hit the exclamation point in the corner for the message, and when I do, i see the message. (though exclamation has an extra 'm' in it, unless that's a british way of spelling it?)

[purplecat]

No, I think I just can't spell, especially when in a panic.

[eve11]

ha! I also noticed today, when I switched to "Play with a random word", it gives me the word, but every time I make a guess, it changes the screen back to my completed (6-letter) word of the day. When I hit enter again, it goes back to my 5-letter random word challenge and lets me complete it, but it flashes to the completed word of the day after each entered guess.

[purplecat]

OK that is very odd. I'm not aware of that behaviour happening for anyone else. What browser are you using?

[eve11]

This was on chrome version 111.0.5563.146

[purplecat]

I'm just tried on Chrome 112 and it's fine. I'm mildly perplexed. I can think of some reasons why you might keep getting the winning info message, for instance, but I'm a bit flummoxed why it keeps switching you out of random mode.

[eve11]

Ad or popup blockers?

[eve11]

Interesting, it seems to be working correctly now. I didn't change anything...

[purplecat]

OK, that's good. Maybe you got caught up in some debugging state from the couple of hours when I was frantically trying to stop it deleting everything.

[purplecat]

Maybe? I don't know much about how they work - but I'd expect them to block the win message, not unset the variable that dictates whether you are in random or regular mode.