Experimenting with Permutation Wordle
Aurora Hiveley
Department of Mathematics
Rutgers University
Piscataway, NJ 08854
USA
Abstract:
Consider a game of permutation wordle in which a player attempts to guess
a secret permutation in Sn
in as few guesses as possible. In each round,
the guessing player is told which indices of their guessed permutation
are correct. How can we optimize the player's strategy? Kutin and
Smithline proposed a strategy called cyclic shift in which all incorrect
entries are shifted one index to the right in successive guesses, and they
conjectured its optimality. We investigate this conjecture by formalizing
what a "strategy" looks like, performing experimental analysis on
inductively constructed strategies, and examining the coefficients of
an inductive strategy’s generating function.
Full version: pdf,
dvi,
ps,
latex,
Maple code
(Concerned with sequences
A000295
A023548
A046739
A284843
A385588.)
Received September 17 2025; revised version received February 17 2026; March 1 2026;
March 9 2026.
Published in Journal of Integer Sequences,
March 9 2026.
Return to
Journal of Integer Sequences home page