Weird...the NYT is referenced only in the Introduction, and never is it suggested that there is an affiliation between the New York Times and the game Waffle or its creator. They really only reference Wordle to note that Waffle has some very loose similarities, like the fact that they both use letter tiles and both use different colors to hint where those tiles go.
Makes me wonder if the title of the article was generated by an LLM.
Oh, glad to hear that you like it :) I created Waffle.
Yes, it's sort of evolved over time really. Brute force with heuristics, I'd say. The word list is certainly important, along with a few other things that I like to think keep the level of quality above the inferior knock-offs.
Thanks for reaching out. I have done some word games for my own amusement and surprised myself how quickly I can try and reject permutations even in JavaScript. It has felt like the opportunity for a clever algorithm has been robbed!
Makes me wonder if the title of the article was generated by an LLM.
EDIT: add context; fix typo