README.md

Wordle Helper

Introduction

This is a small utility that suggests potential words to use in wordle based upon:

• The GREEN letters you know are in the correct place in the word.
• The YELLOW letters you know are in the word but not their position.
• The GREY letters you know are not in the word at all.

Command line options

Option	Description
-w --word	5 characters representing the characters in the word or wildcards of a space or ? e.g. "M?TAL"
-k --known-letters (optional)	A string of known letters in the word e.g. ABF
-e --excluded-letters (optional)	A string of letters known not to be in the word e.g. QUZ
-d --dictionary-file	Full path to the dictionary/word list file to be used to locate potential words e.g "./etc/dictionary-en.txt"

The Code

Getting The Code

You can get the code by cloning this repository with:

git clone https://github.com/IanG/wordle-helper.git

Building The Application

From the base directory build the application with:

dotnet restore ./WordleHelper
dotnet build ./WordleHelper

Running The Application

A dictionary file is provided in the etc directory which can be used with the --dictionary-file command line parameter.

Discover Command Line Parameters

To see the available command line parameters run:

dotnet run --project WordleHelper -- --help

which will report back:

Usage: WordleHelper [options]
Options:
  -w|--word              The Word to get help with
  -k|--known-letters     Letters known to be in the word but not their position
  -e|--excluded-letters  Letters known NOT to be in the word.
  -d|--dictionary-file   Path to the dictionary file containing words to check against
  -?|-h|--help           Show help information.

Finding Words

Locate words by providing the appropriate values for command line parameters e.g.

dotnet run --project WordleHelper -- --word "M????" --known-letters "AL" --excluded-letters="CDFGHIKOPQRSUVWXYZ" --dictionary-file "./etc/dictionary-en.txt" 

Will give the following output:

WordleHelper 1.0.0.0

            Word: M _ _ _ _ 
   Known Letters: A L 
Excluded Letters: C D F G H I K O P Q R S U V W X Y Z 

 Dictionary File: ./etc/dictionary-en.txt

 Potential Words: 13

MABEL MABLE MALAM MALAN MALEE MALET MALTA MANAL MELAM MELAN 
MELBA MELLA METAL 

Tooling Used

This solution has been engineered using Microsoft .NET 5.0 using the following freely available tooling:

• A Bash shell.
• Microsoft .NET Core SDK
• Nuget Package(s)
  • McMaster.Extensions.CommandLineUtils
• Microsoft Visual Studio Code enhanced with the following plugins:
  • C# for Visual Studio Code (Omnisharp)
  • GitLens
  • Markdown Preview Enhanced (for creating this file)