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[Music] what is going on people of the internet welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast we're your hosts I'm
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Marquez and I'm Andrew and it's Samsung week so we had a Samsung event unpacked a couple new phones some tablets but also this week we spoke to a special
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guest and we'll be getting to that right after we talk about Samsung stuff Josh wle who is the creator of the now
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infamous wle if that name sounded familiar yep it's because it is it's a pretty familiar word so we're going to
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be talking to him he's he's great he's a fellow creator also fellow ultimate fry player and has a lot of really interesting answers to a lot of my
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Wordle questions so I have had some dying questions and I I finally got to ask them to him so stay tuned for those
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for sure but I think right off the top we should jump into the new phones our new mug a new wave for mug because this is way more exciting than Samsung phones
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and that's also out of focus yeah aut Focus oh we'll just take some nice pictures and we can put it up on video but yeah wave for mug really excited
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about that it's beautiful red and black Matt Black wouldn't have it any other way yeah red interior black outside very
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nice we're just it's all it's uh we're all about the details here on waveform shop. md.com yeah sounds awful when it's
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smacks to the table and in your headphones you're welcome we'll try not to do that over here yeah there it is
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nice okay sorry back to Samsung in the same matte black color I now have here the Phantom black Galaxy s22 Ultra and I
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have the Pink Gold Galaxy s22 plus which do you want to talk about first I mean I know you want to talk about pink first so let's do it all right pink s22 plus oh wait I just
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noticed something I haven't taken the plastic off can I on the mic if you put it next to it this is big for me I
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already took the plastic off this like getting a promotion likey okay sorry I sorry
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I'm not going to get to do this very often but uh I'm going to do my own public plastic
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peel I just want to say that was pretty good that was a good one I I'm a natural
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so that's the first time that phone's ever been fully brand new although I think there's some plastic on the bottom too but sure let's talk about s22 and
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s22 plus let do regular first um so these phones are straight from the design of the S21 with a few small
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changes really um new specs being Snapdragon 8 gen 1 or a 4 NM xnos chip depends on the region you're in but we have the Snapdragon one here basically the same dimensions but slightly smaller
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so we went from a 6.2 to a 6.1 in display on the smaller phone and I think a 6.7 to a 6.6 inch display on this
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bigger one you're holding F this feels bigger does it feel bigger or heavier I think it the general sense of feeling of it feels bigger interesting while it
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might be smaller I I feel like the thickness is a bit thicker it's since it's like flat edges and just kind of
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flat all around it I mean it's got a small curve on the side I don't know this feels bigger in my hand okay then
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well what are you comparing it to by the way the old the S21 plus okay yeah no it is definitely so the couple things I
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noticed number one I really love the back it's got this like satin even though I wouldn't get pink whatever it
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is a a satin finish on the back and it is slightly more squared off I like I think that's what makes it feel like thicker almost um and I would like to see the green really bad cuz I think the
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green probably looks really nice I dig green um I have also noticed while the s22 and 22 plus keep this kind of like
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similar camera bump it's not completely flush with the corner right like the old
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one um it has like this little lip there which isn't that big of a deal I still like the design I was kind of saying
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when we first saw this that this almost looks like an early CAD rendering of the
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S21 before they like you know put finishing touches on it like really smoothed out and box because it's boxier
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it just feels like hey let's do a quick mockup this is the like really squared off version of it that's not like all
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the minute details in the design and I can see that but I like it better which is also weird that I think it looks less
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finished but I like it better I do like it better also so it's also a couple other small things about it one the back
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is metal not plastic the back yep oh sorry the back is glass not plastic the rails are still metal but the back was glastic on the S21 and S21 plus this is a this is actually glass so that's cool
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a little bit more dense a little bit I think it's actually the same weight despite being smaller so it's a little more dense okay and then the other thing
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is the battery is actually smaller so this is something we were noting we were watching the presentation and you noted
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that there's like a big difference between the big phone and the small phone battery size both of them did get 300 milliamp hours smaller this one is
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the big one I'm holding is now it's a 4500 mamp battery down from 4,800 and the small one went from 4,000 to 3700 so I'm interested in seeing how the battery
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life holds up um because the one other small change is the display is now an Adaptive refresh rate from 10 to 120 HZ
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notably I asked Samsung if it's an ltpo display and they said no the ltpo display on the ultra goes from 1 to 120 HZ this is just an Adaptive refresh rate
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display from 10 to 120 HZ not sure if that's going to be more efficient than before if it's going to make up for the smaller battery I have yet to actually answer that considering Samsung's told
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us almost nothing we can't make that much of a an assumption hopefully like when we're going through the review a
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little deeper maybe they'll give us some better information I mean this is like hour three holding the phones like we
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had a firstand on experience I just peeled the plastic off so we haven't gotten very far on these yet but I
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really dig how this looks I think Samsung's killing it lately again I don't love the pink color or the bronze
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whatever they're aren't they calling it like pink bronze this is Pink Gold Pink Gold yeah and I think the the ultra has
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like a bronze color better than when Apple went rose gold and turned it into a Band-Aid so we're there um but yeah I
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want to see the green really bad let's swap over to the ultra the no uh S I think you made that joke already so it's probably not that funny um s22 Ultra so we got a bunch of new things with the
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s22 ultra number one camera bump here's the S21 Ultra that I loved so much gone now just the Rings the the rumors are true it does have that slightly new design you can see that in the Hands-On
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video I don't really love or hate it I think I just thought of something though okay looking at these up next to each other because this is going the more
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note uh route which is like the totally flat Edge I don't think they would have been able to round it as nicely with the
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rounded Edge on top of this so do you think that's why they eliminated the the bump completely well I think they
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eliminated the bump because they made a note oh yeah I thought they could still like keep it Al it's weird to have three
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a lineup of three phones where one of them has a different looks very different like the camera bump so I'll
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just jump right into that then so uh this phone has a stylus built in just like a Samsung Galaxy Note this phone
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has a top flat and bottom just like a Samsung Galaxy Note uh and this phone has the curved sides and all of the
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dimensions that a Samsung Galaxy Note would have so my running Theory almost sarcastically but also like kind of seriously a little bit is I think Samsung just made a Samsung Galaxy Note
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22 Ultra and then just called it a Galaxy s22 Ultra and slotted it in at the top it looks different because it is different but it has all the same spec upgrades it still has a 5,000 mAh
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battery despite adding an Spen Seline spe has G of all theer specs the way to terab of storage have 12 gigs of
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RAM so that's pretty sweet although they had a 16 gig ram version last time I don't know if you knew that so they
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don't have that anymore but um some new cameras some new stuff to check out for me but the new display is a 1750 nits
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Peak brightness which is amazing can't wait to use that outside it was already really good but this is even better
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funnily enough I know a while ago I mean we're talking it might be two years by now but
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when we were no it was probably just last year we were wondering if there was going to be a note series then there wasn't then we were wondering if the
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note was dead and we kind of thought that either the note will come back or the s22 will have an S Pen I while we
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said that and while that's technically what happened this is not what I was expecting I wasn't expecting to literally just release a new note call
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it an s22 I was expecting more of an upgrade to the actual s22 with like the old rounded enges the
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old top and everything like that this is literally just a new note right and I I love it yeah I love that they did that I
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think it's fascinating so now the new I just want to say all the starting prices 7.99 for the s22 $9.99 for the s22 plus
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pretty premium and then $1.99 starting for the s22 ultra there's going to be a lot of users that grab the s22 ultra cuz it's the highest end one and are just
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going to get an Spen I I guess they just never use it they just never take it out of the phone never care about it yeah
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I'm not sure I it's there I guess I have a couple thoughts first of all I already
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have friends texting me about this and one thing I always forget when this happens is Samsung's trade in program is
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phenomenal like I have a friend who's about to get an s22 ultra and he's getting it for like 50 bucks or
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something it's it's like just under $900 with turning in like an S10 something which is just impressive like that's wait they're turning in an S10 and getting the s22 ultra for like 900 bucks
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oh so they get 300 bucks off that's pretty that's solid a three-year-old phone doing that that's awesome um my
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other thing is I agree with you I think there's going to be a lot of people who get this because it's the bleeding edge Top ofthe Line phone and don't care
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about the Spen if they're if this is the only note from now on from Samsung yep I would
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love for them to do an A series with an S Pen or something smaller because every time we talk about the stylus we get so
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many people saying that they do enjoy the stylus but they don't need this bleeding edge topof thee line four
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cameras 100 time zoom like stuff like that they just use it every day um there is stuff out there like the Moto G stylus that maybe works that but like that's one of the most surprising things
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about Samsung to me is they seem to be perfectly willing to make a bunch of different phones like we just got the
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S21 Fe right before these they make a ton of different various phones at different price ranges features I am surprised that the only way that they offer an Spen is in a phone that starts
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at $1,199 I feel like they would kill a like $500 with an Spen and you mentioned Motorola like there's other companies that are doing cheaper phones with spens
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Moto G stylus but like what if Samsung did yeah like an a like an A52 type thing but the same convenience factors
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maybe it's not extremely fast maybe the response rate isn't quite the same but like the general conven of like marking
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up a PDF or like circling things on a diagram if you're an architect like all that stuff still applies and the phone
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is $5.99 instead of 12.99 that that I'm surprised they don't do that I feel like
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that would sell very I it it's a niche obviously but I do think it would do very well for like like we've mentioned
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before landscapers contractors Architects anything like that doing stuff out in the field I think it would be awesome the only thing that that
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maybe strikes me as an answer is maybe Samsung is doing the math realizing not that many people use the S Pen and that's why they killed the note in the first place and they still like have the
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development in R&D to offer an Spen and the style and the the tablets by the way have great Spen Integrations too true
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but turns out people don't really have that much of a a use case or not that many people use the Spen on the phone maybe maybe that's the reason it's probably the reason so hey this is what
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we get same reason pixel 4 didn't have an ultra wide camera but doesn't mean I like the reason for it right answer so
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yeah I'm going to be I'm starting to test the phone now so this is uh it's basically just going to onetoone replace my Galaxy S21 Ultra we'll see I think
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I'm going to like it and I honestly don't suspect I'm going to find too much wrong with it I I need to test the software and the battery and the cameras
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of course I've already started taking 8K videos of Mac it still did the weird punch in that was that was actually
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something I already found that was weird um I'm going turn on location when I hit uh video mode look how much it punches
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in oh it it punches in to like 3x though I'm still I thought I would still be using the primary camera but I guess not
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so I need to figure that part out we'll try figure but you know who's even shooting AK video that's always the biggest bummer is when you like and this
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is just for all phones but like you set up a shot and then you realize you're not in video mode yet and you want to do it on video and then you click it and
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then you're you're like oh man I'm not framed at all for this correctly and then maybe your back's up against something already and you realize now
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you can't take video of it or maybe you just still have a pixel 4 and still don't have an ultra wide camera and you're definitely not salty about that
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at all yeah no that's that's something I'll play with but the bottom line is we'll be testing these the reviews are coming in the next one to two weeks per
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us let me know in the comments whether this is the clip or the full episode what you want to see in that review that
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always helps me but yeah also check out the full impressions videos if you just want to know my first thoughts from the first hour with it do you think you want
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to get one of these phones that's my last question honestly I I think I want to just get like an S21 Ultra for way cheaper really good phone think that
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like I honest I know I highly doubt like that would be the ending of this video is like recommending an S21 Ultra but if
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it's so close to it if you really like the design of the S21 Ultra which I think a lot of people
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prefer prefer how this looks especially on the back yeah so here's my only like counter to that is I do love the note style of this if I'm the note style it's a one-ear newer phone which means one
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extra year of guaranteed software support um it's also going to be just you know slightly better SP those types
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of things if you can get a good trade in like you mentioned their program is pretty good like I would the thing like
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people always I guess this is so tired for me on Twitter because I see it every time I talk about a phone but everyone's like this isn't a good upgrade from last
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year's phone of course it's not that's just like the the new kiaforte is not a great upgrade from last year's kiaforte
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of course it's not but for people who have older phones for people who have 2017 2018 phones this is the this
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represents the best available so if you do really strongly prefer the design that much yeah you'll be able to find a
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discount on S21 or if you want to spend mid mid-range prices on last year's Flagship if you find a good discount I'll say it this way just from my first experience now if you find a good discount on S21 Ultra I have no problem
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recommending that phone despite one less year of guaranteed software updates but I have a feeling this is going to be a very similar very good phone I do also I
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I don't know how we didn't say this I think we got sidetracked but like we talked about that camera bump and how this is like singular lenses on the s22
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ultra yeah I hated it at first but I think that's just because that's how good the S21 Ultra looked I think this
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looks fine actually black I think this looks really sick the more I'm looking at it cases are going to be kind of
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interesting I don't know I'm starting to really dig the singular lenses see how fast it grows on you see how fast that
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happens one day yeah there it is plus you don't have to look at the back much all right we're going to take a quick
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break we're going to come back and we're going to talk wle being a Creator and viral hits all in one stay tuned this
00:15:58
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indeed that's indeed.com form terms of conditions apply so let's just jump right in so uh
00:16:51
on February 8th 2022 I opened my phone uh I went to power language. co.uk and I played the world game that I have played so often uh I've never gotten it in two before so I was really excited because
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on my first guess I got three greens and I really thought this was it I thought it was finally happening I was going to
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get three Greens on the second I was going to get all of them green on the second one uh my second guess was wrong
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though and then my third guess was wrong and then my fourth guess was wrong and so I got it in five out of six and I was
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kind of mad but I also felt I posted it on the internet and I felt sort of united with the rest of the world and
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our Collective fr ation so um today we have the man responsible for that United Collective frustration Josh wle thanks for joining us on waveform today thank you for having me on so I
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guess first of all your your name is very close to the Wordle game it's very it's one letter off basically but well done yeah yeah please uh please break
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down the the background of of I guess how you how you created it why you created Wordle the sort of origin story
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I'm sure you've probably told a million times yeah yeah so on the name front yeah it's a play on my name it's a word
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game it was one of those things I'm sure you've had this with a project where you start it and you just give it a dumb it needs a name you give it a dumb name and
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you're like that is a dumb name I'll change it in the future and then obviously like a bunch of things about this project the domain for instance
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power language. co.uk probably not where you want to launch a viral game uh given that no one can remember any of that and
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they have to Google it uh but yeah so uh I actually this was a game that I made for my uh partner she and I really enjoy playing word games uh especially some of
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the ones that the New York Times offers so they have daily crosswords a game called spelling be that's kind of uh you
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play once a day and it's a word game so my goal was to make a game for her that she would enjoy playing and Wordle was
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it like I I made a prototype of it a long time ago um back in 2013 and it it was similar but had some key differ and I basically just put it away I shared it with a few friends people were like yeah
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not really and then uh at the beginning of 2021 we were playing a lot of games I
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got a bit more confident as a developer and I was like I think that there was that idea had some legs so I dusted it off and I made it and it was literally
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just the two of us playing it for 6 months and then I introduced it some friends and family in the UK and then
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kind of November it just started uh it got picked up by a few like Tech bloggers and then it it really really
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took off beginning of December and then yeah it's been a been a roller Co roller coaster so it's it started really just
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with a couple people you shared it with and did it always have that uh that share metric at the end because as soon
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as I saw those uh those bars I knew that was going to accelerated but at one point did that get
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added yeah so that was added sometime in late November I think so what happened a
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tech blogger Andy bio he runs uh wax.org where he kind of collect interesting things online he had tweeted about it
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and posted a blog post about it and it got picked up in a New York Times newsletter and then as a result of that
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for reasons that I don't understand it got really popular in New Zealand and I've heard about New Zealand that it has
00:20:13
a very interconnected Twitter verse right doesn't not many people live in New Zealand comparatively to somewhere
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like the US so people tend to be very connected and at this point that share grid the Emoji share grid that you're talking about didn't exist so people
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would just say I got the Wordle in three you know and uh a player over there who
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I don't know a woman named Elizabeth S she started typing out her results as that emoji grid and then I saw other people copying it so people literally opening their emoji keyboard and then
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going back and forth between the two and typing it out so I was like I can integrate That Into You Know into the
00:20:48
game really easily and then that obviously has had a huge uh impact because it gives you this artifact
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that's even though I did a bunch of things and I did this throughout W I did a bunch of things that the opposite of what you're meant to do if you're trying
00:20:59
to make something go viral or grow like there's no link back to the game for instance in the in the Shar grid it did
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give you this artifact and invited you to share and that has obviously done wonders for it in terms of it uh
00:21:12
catching on and spreading around yeah that is definitely how I found it I think there was a couple people who
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shared their grids in my timeline and by the way a funny story as I still know some people who typed out the Emoji grid
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manually for some reason which is hilarious yeah yeah yeah um but that's how I found it it was funny though you
00:21:30
mentioned you know you did a couple things in the game that were not necessarily designed to help accelerate
00:21:37
growth it was just like it's almost this like pure simple thing that you sort of
00:21:42
stumble across on the internet kind of like the old days almost a little bit um were there things you thought about like it starts growing and then you've you've
00:21:49
had other experiments like this in the past I want to talk about but did you think of other things you could do with Wordle to maybe change it up or was
00:21:56
there sort of a beauty to keeping it simple yeah I think that's a really good question I think because I had started
00:22:02
it simple and I had a really clear idea of what I was doing with it it made it really easy to say no to any of those compulsions as they came up because you
00:22:13
know whereas if my goal had been to make a viral game from the outset I think I would have been you know capitalizing on
00:22:20
this in like a bunch of different ways and like maybe but but it felt like I don't know with all the projects that
00:22:25
I've done that have been successful I found part of of it is not is just kind of doing the thing that feels authentic to me and if people happen to like that then great if they don't not and so then
00:22:38
allowing W's success to like make me change it which obviously I was willing to do right I did add the share grid which was something that wasn't wasn't there originally so there is a a boundary there but it it I don't know if
00:22:51
if I start I have to think about what are my motivations when I'm doing this thing and are they aligned with it gets
00:22:57
really hard when you're doing things for the wrong reasons basically so I found it simpler to keep it uh the same are there any features you would like to see
00:23:04
is this uh this a feature request coming yeah no no no I I I like that it's simple I think as soon as I saw it I was
00:23:10
like oh well I can't believe there's only one word a day I just want to keep playing but like oh maybe they'd add five sixl words seven letter words maybe
00:23:16
they do a bunch of other stuff but I like that it was simple it was just a clean one single purpose for it the
00:23:22
entire time and I actually want I wanted to talk to you because I feel like as a Creator I I feel like I relate a lot you
00:23:28
because one of the things I've said for a long time is one of the best things that never happened to me was having a a
00:23:35
video of mine just Spike and just go super viral and then feel like I have to chase that carrot or and like evolve and
00:23:43
become sort of defined by that Viral success um how do you feel about like you've had other projects I want to talk about uh the place and the button and what those are um how do you think about
00:23:56
like the success of those project and not letting it Define you yeah I mean this is incredibly hard
00:24:04
and uh it kind of does Define me in a way that I don't actually feel comfortable with uh like I feel good
00:24:13
when a project I make does well I feel bad when a project I make doesn't do well and that is not healthy I think and
00:24:21
I I think to a certain degree it's unavoidable as a Creator putting stuff out and sharing it but at the same time
00:24:26
I think it's like it's led to some quite unpleasant places for me personally and
00:24:32
uh and then again in terms of when we're talking about what is your motivation it kind of gets confusing if you're making
00:24:38
things to be a success but that wasn't the motivation when you made the original things that were successful
00:24:44
like how does all that get it all gets a bit uh all gets a bit murky and so yeah I had these projects at Reddit that are
00:24:50
kind of more I would call like social experiments than games um and they Silicon Valley tends to do these really
00:24:56
dumb April Fool's Day things where they like make a prank and it's super lame and everyone looks at it and readit I
00:25:02
was like what if we do something different like we use this day where we can do we're kind of locked into the
00:25:09
things we can do with our users what if we use this one day a year where you can kind of do anything online that people are really kind of wasting in my opinion
00:25:15
and we do something just try something completely different and so that is where kind of the Reddit approach now of
00:25:22
like often doing a social experiment that explores the way that humans interact at
00:25:28
large scales online um kind of kind of came from uh and and and just like a general disappointment with the lack of imagination in in the tech world I think we're on the same page about tech World
00:25:39
April fools yeah I the button was really interesting I I kind of vaguely remember it because it was so long ago but you so
00:25:45
you were working at Reddit and you had the opportunity to try something cool something fun like a social experiment
00:25:50
on and that was a great day to do it what was the button just break down what exactly that was yeah so the button
00:25:56
super simple it is uh a subreddit so Reddit is organized into communities called subreddits of people who share
00:26:03
similar interests there's a subreddit called the button and at the top of the button there was a button and a timer
00:26:08
the timer counts down from 60 seconds if you press the button the timer resets back up to 60 and starts
00:26:15
counting down uh the key thing is that you can only ever press the button once you have to be logged in and once you
00:26:20
press the button you can never Place press it again so then the question becomes how long will the collective
00:26:27
internet decide to keep pressing this button right like if it reaches zero it stops and it will never run again and so
00:26:34
you have a 60-second window in which to press the button and it turns out the answer is two months uh so over two
00:26:41
months every 60 seconds someone somewhere chose to press the button which ended up being over a million
00:26:48
people and there was a bunch of stuff there like the time that you pressed we gave you on Reddit we called it flare
00:26:54
it's like a little tag that appears next to your username in the community and so if you pressed it early you got a
00:27:00
different color next to your name than if you pressed it later and then so all these social hierarchies started forming
00:27:06
you know people who pressed it early were seen as impulsive and they couldn't wait whereas if you held it if you
00:27:11
waited for two months you could press it when there were only two seconds left on the button you get red flare and then people will be like whoa but uh so there
00:27:19
all these weird social dynamics emerged from this like really really simple uh idea and and and that's one thing that I found works really well for me as kind of we
00:27:31
were talking about earlier like have you you know all the what ifs like what if you change this what if you changed this
00:27:37
and I think what I found worked for me with the projects at Reddit and to an extent Wordle is like trying to make
00:27:43
things as simple as possible it's so easy to say with a created project what if we do this what if we do this because
00:27:49
no one knows the answer right and instead I found it easier to be like well how much can we remove and still
00:27:56
leave the core idea here and still make an enjoyable experience yeah I love that that is a fascinating
00:28:02
psychological experiment and just like just has just the right amount of small simple tie-ins to like if you know you
00:28:09
know that type of thing um it's it kind of reminds me of when we did the the blind smartphone camera test especially
00:28:14
the first year we ever did this just sort of we had this random idea of like what if we wanted to compare smartphone
00:28:20
cameras but then just didn't tell people what they were and we put them up in this like bracket style thing and just
00:28:25
hand people two pictures and just hey pick one you you don't know what it is and even at that point it started
00:28:31
getting kind of complicated because we had to seed them behind the scenes and sort of figure out how we organize everything but I like the the idea of
00:28:38
something being so pure and simple just a button how long can we go and then the
00:28:43
Natural Curiosity of like well how long will it go and what will people do about it um what the other one is the place
00:28:50
that was also at Reddit right what was the that was another subreddit correct yeah yeah so that was place it was a uh
00:28:57
it was a blank canvas uh it was 1,000 pixels wide by 1,000 pixels high so a million pixels total and you could as a
00:29:04
user you could place a tile anywhere on the canvas and the caveat was you could only place one tile every 5 minutes and so uh as a individual you couldn't
00:29:15
really impact the canvas right placing one tile every 5 minutes you can't have an effect but if you can find a large
00:29:21
group of people that are aligned with you and you can all work together to paint the same thing essentially and so
00:29:28
it was a bit of a gamble to be honest right like giving the anonymous internet internet or pseud Anonymous internet a blank canvas on which to paint you know it it's like you assume the worst of the
00:29:40
internet is going to emerge um but like part of it for me was understanding that
00:29:45
most people or my belief that most people when given the choice wanted to do the good thing and by creating an
00:29:51
experience where you could only achieve anything by collaborating it was going to be way easier for people to come
00:29:57
together to do a positive thing that it was for them to come together and do a bad thing you know if you want to draw something heinous on the canvas you
00:30:03
would have to convince a bunch of other people that that was a valuable use of their time and I think a lot of what we
00:30:08
see online you know there are like the power of a toxic individual or small group of individuals to really dictate the experience for the many is kind of warps our sense of like actually I think
00:30:21
most people will try and do positive things for sure that's that's a great psychological experiment and a great
00:30:27
result that sort of came out of it I do remember that although I don't know what I did with my tile I kind of forget there's a bunch there's a lot yeah yeah
00:30:34
it was pretty it was pretty busy and and to be clear like there at the very start of it like a big phallic image started
00:30:41
emerging in the center of the canvas and that was like oh I like we going to have to shut this down right like is this
00:30:47
basically a bathroom store and what we actually one of the things that I've reflected on a lot since then is that we
00:30:56
had we had created this space for people to interact online and in make in creating it we' made a bunch of decisions that actually really meaningfully impact how people can
00:31:07
interact you know they're placing tiles they can only place one every 5 minutes another decision that we made and had
00:31:12
thought about a little bit but not a lot was where they would start on the canvas so initially we were just starting everyone in the middle which is where
00:31:19
this unpleasant image started emerging and so we were like we in response to that happening we were like well we
00:31:26
control this experience how can we uh influence people so that this isn't the outcome cuz we think there's more here and so the fix there was really simple we just randomized people's starting
00:31:37
position and it turned out if they started on a blank area of the canvas they would think more about what they wanted to do or like you know start
00:31:44
creating something totally different whereas if we were all dumping people in the same spot together just they contributed to the first thing they saw
00:31:50
which was yeah yeah yeah no it's funny now you know reminding myself of like these super really interesting things
00:31:56
that have happened in the past it almost seems like if I if I had known that maybe one person was behind both the
00:32:03
place and the button that it's like almost inevitable that something else is going to happen that I should pay
00:32:08
attention to in a sort of social experiment World although wle sort of had a the opposite origin you didn't
00:32:14
have the huge community of Reddit you had a small group that turned into a big group um is there a pressure to like
00:32:21
think of the next big idea like this is another Creator question yeah oh yeah so
00:32:26
I actually I returned way I after place I left Reddit uh and then I rejoined as a so I was there not as an engineer initially and I rejoined as an engineer and part of rejoining was to I work on
00:32:38
these projects again and I did two other April Fool's Day projects at Reddit there were nowh near as successful like
00:32:45
they weren't successful really by my metric and um I really that really felt bad like I felt like I wanted to be
00:32:52
making things that were like place and that successful and and that kind of I think led me astray a bit in terms of
00:32:58
the kinds of experience I wasn't creating experiences because they felt necessarily authentic to what I wanted
00:33:04
to do I was doing them because I wanted to make another viral I wanted to make something as big as place and so uh and
00:33:11
then Wordle was just like yeah not any of that at all like I wasn't thinking about any of these things I was just making the experience my partner would
00:33:17
like and that I would like and it happened to you know really catch people's attention and uh yeah I think that so so I suppose if I go out
00:33:30
deliberately to try and make the next big thing I feel intense pressure and I found that that doesn't actually lead to
00:33:35
the positive things but it's kind of frustrating like how do I make this my job how do I make creating things my job if my only way is like like I said I
00:33:42
made a prototype for Wordle in 2013 if I have to mull on every idea for like multiple years like that that and I'm sure you struggle with this right like you have to make things on a Cadence and
00:33:56
how I'm fascin by people how you I'll be interested to hear how you think about approaching creative stuff when you're on when when you have to have consistent output basically it seems impossible
00:34:08
from my perspective yeah there's there there's a good amount that's a really good question there's a lot of outside influence that helps you sort of guide
00:34:15
yourself to see what people are interested in and that helps you know little things that appear in videos
00:34:20
generally but the thing that I always started with which was way back this is more than 10 years ago is I started
00:34:26
making videos that I would want to watch so I didn't really have a target audience in mind because it wasn't
00:34:32
actually a real job to be a YouTuber so I was kind of Lucky in that sense so I was just making videos for fun because I
00:34:37
was like I really want a channel to exist that does these types of tutorials and Tech videos so I'm just going to make it I'm just going to do them
00:34:43
because I I if I found that channel I'd subscribe so hey maybe it will work um and that's been the Common Thread
00:34:49
through everything so it kind of works the same way with Wordle you made something that you knew one person would like and it turns out there's a lot of
00:34:55
people that also like the same thing so was a success for that reason but really the core of it is like there's a
00:35:01
guaranteed Target demographic of one that I can tailor it really well for and it sort of grows from
00:35:07
there and I think it means when you're creating you can feel really good about what you're creating right like you're just doing this thing that feels true to
00:35:14
you and uh that then that makes that answers I have found that answers a lot of other questions like anytime you're making something a bunch of questions come up like those wh ifs and having a
00:35:26
clear idea of like no I'm trying to make experience that feels good to me often answers a bunch of those questions so
00:35:31
it's really useful heuristic sort of thing all right we got to take a quick break when we come back we're going to talk a lot more Wordle this episode of w
00:35:38
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67 369 so now so worldle is now an international phenomenon I mean I wake up every day and it's trending on Twitter before I even open Twitter so it's it's getting out there um I want to
00:37:08
know I want to get your reactions to some of the like biggest things that have happened in worldle World number
00:37:14
one is all these big companies sort of like jumping on the bandwagon of like doing a whle meme or something like that like if you Google wle right now there's a nice little uh animation that plays at
00:37:26
the top but have you seen have you seen other companies like using Wordle in in ads and tweets and random stuff like
00:37:32
that yeah I mean isn't this indicative that it's jumped the shark you know it's on the down once once the brands arrive
00:37:40
then you know you are desperately uncool uh I I mean I don't really mind about that stuff I know why people do it I feel I feel great empathy for social
00:37:52
media managers who have to constantly be generating content and so they're constantly having to react to whatever the latest thing is online I've been
00:37:58
through enough viral things online to know the internet has an insociable appetite it always wants something new
00:38:05
and right now kind of Wordle is that thing it won't be for much longer I can't imagine it will hold people's
00:38:11
attention so this is just like part of how part of how these things go and like whether I like that or not is kind of immaterial I suppose yeah there's like a like a halflife of any internet object
00:38:24
like the halflife of a tweet is probably like 24 hours for like all the activity
00:38:29
to to occur and happen unless it's some crazy massive tweet the half lifee of a YouTube video might be in a tech World
00:38:36
maybe like six months you know because you know by the next year new stuff comes out to replace it um I guess the
00:38:43
halflife of like Wordle is a total question mark right now there is an account though by the way that's uh
00:38:49
you've seen this it's the it's like wle stats and it tells you how many people play it every day and how many people use hard mode every day um I
00:38:58
Bud Kevin oh really okay yeah he's the VP of engineering at Kickstarter yeah yeah he just made it in a spare time
00:39:04
that is another great account to follow because it shows you like oh this was a frustrating day for a lot of people I see a lot of five and sixes out whatever
00:39:10
so that's that's a fun one for me um yeah so it is when I see that account I do see that it is still growing but I
00:39:17
have a bunch of I have a bunch of world specific questions just I I have to ask like while I have you Wordle it's it's a
00:39:24
massive thing so I need to know number one five word was there any any reason you chose five letters versus four or
00:39:30
six is there just a great catalog of five letter words yeah so I actually when I made the game so the inspiration
00:39:37
for the game I played a lot of a game called Mastermind as a kid I'm not sure if you ever played that it's like you're guessing at a pattern it's very similar
00:39:44
mechanically but you're not guessing words you're guessing colored patterns and so there's no innate meaning encoded
00:39:50
in the pattern you know it can be blue blue green red right and it means nothing and you just have to like brute force your way through it and with word
00:39:57
obviously you know that the answer is a word and you know that you know the word is very unlikely to begin with an X so you probably won't want to start your
00:40:03
guess with an X sort of thing um but so uh Mastermind used uh Four Pegs so the first version of world I built actually used four letters and I didn't it just wasn't satisfying it was like it felt
00:40:15
like you were repeating a lot I don't know it just didn't feel good and then my plan was to try with five letters six
00:40:21
letters seven letters find out which one really felt good uh I was I mean I'm not a great programmer now I was even worse
00:40:28
programmer back then uh it was a lot of work for me to like incorporate the word list and stuff like that so I added five
00:40:34
letters and suddenly the game felt very different and I was like oh this feels really good so much so that I actually
00:40:39
stopped experimenting with the word length and I just started experimenting with how many guesses you could have to
00:40:46
arrive at one of the things we haven't talked about with wle which I think is part of its appeal is it is quite easy
00:40:51
it's not it's not that you it's not you are very unlikely to fail a Wordle you can still fail but for the most part you'll get there and it kind of feels good and you feel smart when you get there and some days you get it in three
00:41:03
some days it takes six and uh yeah yeah I think it's it's right in that goldilock zone of like you you almost
00:41:09
never immediately get it that would just be a stroke of luck one or two maybe it happens sometimes I've never gotten it in one or two still but it is very
00:41:16
likely that you'll figure it out by the end which is a nice satisfying Charming goldilock Zone length of guesses so six
00:41:23
worked really well uh you mentioned a word list and I I think that's been talked about in the past like if you
00:41:29
look in the code of the site you can see this this huge list of five letter words who came up with the words is it every
00:41:35
felter word do you know what the next word is how does this word list work yeah yeah well that sounds like a
00:41:41
philosophical question who does come up with words where the words come from but so no there is a dictionary of every
00:41:47
word in the English language I don't remember where I got it but so they're about I filtered it down to five letter words there are about 13,000 of them
00:41:54
most of them are like absolutely bogus like you and I have never heard of they're like jargon or like you know
00:42:01
Antiquated um and one thing that was so when I built that first prototype in 2013 I just dumped all the words in and
00:42:07
it randomly picked a word and that was the word that you were guessing so it was often a word you never heard of and
00:42:13
you kind of ended up having to brute force your way kind of like Mastermind um you know because the letter it could
00:42:19
begin with the letter X right because it could just be a really obscure word and so uh one of the things when I Revisited
00:42:25
Wordle in January of 21 was it was uh I knew that if I wanted to share it with other people it would feel unfair if you played Wordle for the first time and the solution was a word that you'd never
00:42:38
heard of like I couldn't imagine you would ever go back to that game You' just be like this is dumb yeah and so
00:42:44
what I had actually done in the intervening years was build my partner another game which was just every the
00:42:51
13,000 felet words and it was just a website that displayed one of the words and three buttons and you had to say I know this word I don't know this word I kind of maybe know this word and she she
00:43:03
was going through a tough time at that point and she just wanted a Mindless game that she could sit there and play so she just categorized all 13,000 words
00:43:10
into I know I don't know yeah and then I we took that list and then did some more filtering on top of that and that gets
00:43:16
down to around 2 and a half thousand words that can be the solution so you can enter any of the 13,000 words as a
00:43:24
valid guess because they are valid felet words but there AR answer will only ever be from that 2500 uh list and that list
00:43:32
is I just randomized it and stuck it in the code because I want to play the game
00:43:37
so I don't actually know what the word is going to be tomorrow smart but obviously that's a bit uh fraught
00:43:42
because like what if we miss the word or something slipped through and there's a bad word coming up or something like that so that's been a a source of stress
00:43:49
but uh one that's been manageable so far it's funny that's so it's kind of a surprise it's sort of on autopilot now
00:43:54
and you're sort of playing the game with everybody else yeah yeah exactly that is that is amazing there is it kind of reminds me
00:44:01
of like game shows you know people always like to watch a game show and feel like they can play along with the
00:44:06
game show on TV there's a game show called common knowledge literally it's just like I think it's Joey patone and
00:44:12
he's just like asking people literally common knowledge questions and it's really hard to be bad at this game but
00:44:18
it's still is like addicting to play along because you just want to make sure you just want to make sure you also get it alongside them and so I feel like
00:44:25
that mechanic it is like I said it's in that goldilock Zone um okay so have you heard of some of these uh I'm not going to call them knockoffs they're like alternate versions of wle my favorite is
00:44:36
called nerle which is a math version where you have to come up with a correct equation you've seen this right do you have a favorite Wordle uh alternate
00:44:47
that's out there right now uh there was one that was very satirical called Lal which was uh you just had to guess a letter and so each day it picks one letter and you have 26 guesses to guess
00:45:00
it basically so it's just like and that was like reducing it there was one that was also interesting I think called Dole
00:45:07
which was like two you were solving two wordles at the same time but you inputting the same guess into both and
00:45:12
you kind of had to narrow it down that was kind of interesting but i' I've been blown away all the riffs did you see
00:45:18
someone did one that was like prime numbers like the answer was a prime number and you could only guess prime numbers and it was like I don't even
00:45:25
know that's hard that's hard like those you need more guesses for those that's really hard yeah wow yeah no I love that
00:45:31
I like that there's so many like simple ones though that's sort of keeps you going um what has been your uh who's
00:45:38
people have been sharing that they play wle who has uh surprised you the most that they played Wordle who has like
00:45:44
shared a Wordle that you didn't expect them to be playing oh interesting I am not very clued in to the world of uh celebs I got to say uh so yeah I don't I
00:45:58
don't know uh I'm I'm amazed anyone's sharing it to be honest I'm amazed anyone that anyone else is is is playing it so I I don't have a compelling answer for you there I've been I would sorry
00:46:11
I've been playing for weeks and then finally just the other day when I was talking about the five out of six I got
00:46:17
that's the first time I ever shared it and literally my my Twitter timeline the entire day was useless cuz everyone was
00:46:23
replying with their world results all day had like 2,000 replies I was like everyone is playing this game and
00:46:29
everyone can relate the same frustration is amazing w wow very Noble of you I want to call out being willing to share
00:46:34
your having your first share being a tough tough game that's like what a a lot of people out there just sharing you
00:46:40
know when they get in in three you know just bragging and then they they hide their uh their struggling days so kudos
00:46:46
to you there's ups and downs so you know you got to be honest with the people I got I got to share it so that was that was a fun experience um so now so I just
00:46:54
also wanted to touch on Ultimate Frisbee because I know that as a a small connecting thread right you've played ulate and you're in you've played in the New York area at some point is that true
00:47:05
uh no I never I have not played in New York I used to play I so I played for claen in the UK and then I came and
00:47:11
played uh College ultimate at the U ofo University of Oregon okay uh and then I played in the Bay area so I played mixed for polar bears and blackbirds um and I
00:47:24
so I don't think we've ever played against each other I'm not even sure how much we overlapped but nextg the next
00:47:31
gen tour was a venture created by my buddy Kevin that I I helped him uh run and so I I knew you were wearing a nextg shirt and I was like oh that's so cool yeah and obv I know like Jimmy and Chris
00:47:43
your teammates on on Pony so I'm not sure do you talk about ultimate a lot it's kind of like it feels very like
00:47:50
ultimate is so pervasive when I was playing it was like was my life and here you are doing the like you're running a
00:47:57
business and you're like a very visible figure but then you're also an ultimate frisbee player and I know how demanding it is to be an ultimate frisbee player
00:48:04
yeah it comes up once in a while it's funny like yeah I'll wear a jersey once in a while and someone from the comments
00:48:09
or someone will email me like oh I designed that Jersey or oh I played on the team from the year of the Jersey
00:48:14
like the community is obviously very tightly knit so anytime anybody finds out some other figure is an ultimate
00:48:19
player it's sort of like an interesting like connect the dots type of situation so I just always thought that was funny
00:48:25
so we might not have ever played each other but definitely watched lots of uo games and I've probably watched clap
00:48:30
games maybe that you've played in I what years were you playing uh for Oregon so
00:48:35
I was at U ofo during the troubled years where we got suspended do I'm not sure if you heard about that story uh I don't
00:48:42
know so that was 2009 10 and 11 and one of those we had our we were number one in the nation and we had our season cancelled due to some Misadventures both on and off the field
00:48:55
as you can imagine College col s sounds like college ultimate in 2010 yeah did you play in college I did I started in 2012 and so I was right after that yeah so yeah I don't know we probably might
00:49:07
not have played each other but that was a sort of a fun connection so we're both creators and we're both ultimate players so hey if you're ever looking to be more
00:49:14
creative maybe playing ultimate is the answer I don't know just just throwing that out there um last question so
00:49:20
Wordle is in the hands of the New York Times now obviously there was some inspiration there you mentioned those other New York Times games um so I I
00:49:27
wonder what's next for the man that had such a big hand in the place and the button and Wordle is there something you
00:49:35
already are looking forward to doing next as a Creator or are you just sort of having a normal life yeah sorry don't
00:49:43
have an exciting answer here I'd actually I joined a company relatively uh recently uh it's like an art
00:49:48
collective in Brooklyn called Mischief uh and uh I'm really enjoying focusing on that and that's what I'm going to do for the short term I'm sure try and create something in future but I don't
00:49:59
think I think wle is probably as big as it's going to get for me I don't think you get more than one wle in your life
00:50:04
Mischief is good Mischief has a lot of good good viral stuff you know their drops are they leave some they have some
00:50:10
some pretty big waves sometimes you know yeah yeah totally yeah sick all right well I got one more test for you it's a question uh I wonder how fast you can
00:50:21
type the alphabet so I don't know if you've ever watched the waveform podcast but every
00:50:27
guest we have on we invite them to do the alphabet typing test literally all you do is just pull up a keyboard screen
00:50:35
record I think Adam's going to drop the website in the in the chat right here and uh all you got to do is get three
00:50:41
tries type it as fast as you can and we put you on a leaderboard with all of our guests everyone's reaction is always
00:50:47
like oh here we go I'm going to have a bad result in an embarrassing spot on the leaderboard but you might be surprised you might surprise yourself no
00:50:53
I know I know my what my capabilities there do you touch type are you a touch typist you use the home row and all that
00:50:59
stuff I think so I type without looking that's probably good enough touch typist I am I am humble here he clearly touched
00:51:06
types I think I'm top five on the leaderboard I'm going to forget no just top five no big deal no big deal uh we
00:51:13
got the do you see the link here type type the alphabet. apppp oh wow what a good so that is a good domain name not
00:51:19
pan language. co.uk they really nailed what they were going for this is a good one they really need a share metric at
00:51:25
this on this website they should learn from Wordle all right all right is this honor System you mentioned some screen
00:51:32
sharing yeah if you if you do have a screen recorder you can give it we're giving everybody three tries first try
00:51:38
you always sort of feel it out and figure out like oh I'm stumbling over Elemental P or something like that so we
00:51:44
give everybody three okay well so the but the uh the screen recorder is unrelated to the
00:51:50
software we're using right now right this is just that's so we'll put it in we'll put it in the podcast pop open
00:51:57
quick time here sweet all right yeah okay I Amic so very shamefully as a programmer I'm using the I don't know what even
00:52:07
call this magic so I tried to get into mechanical keyboards I bought like an entry level one but um turns out you
00:52:14
have to like I type like a spider like I'm not very disciplined at all and it feels like you need to be disciplined with a mechanical keyboard there's a learning curve for sure which is not my vibe so yeah so this is going to be
00:52:26
disaster all right here we go I'm ready I might be good with one and done I'm 4973 seconds which is you know that's
00:52:40
like I had to you see me I was I was looking at the I was looking at the keys I'm just I'm a wreck here this is not if you want to be one and done I'll tell you right now it's a pretty good spot on the leaderboard okay I'll take it that's
00:52:53
F yeah that's faster than I ever ran in I'll tell you that he said 4.9 uh 4.9 73 for your own closure send me that that would put you right behind
00:53:04
me at number three on the leaderboard oh well look at that you know you're saying that and
00:53:11
great strikes again with another hit that was perfect yeah no we'll leave it we'll leave it there I'll call I'll say you know I got close to my but didn't quite didn't quite get there I
00:53:22
think that's a pretty solid solid one Josh thanks for spending the time I know you're a busy guy but I appreciate you
00:53:28
joining me answering my world questions and my my morbid curiosity so uh best of luck with the future and hopefully we
00:53:34
get to talk again sometime thank you thank you thanks for having me on this was great appreciate it take care all
00:53:40
right thanks again to Josh for joining us that was a fantastic conversation Andrew are you gonna keep playing how long do you think you're going to keep
00:53:45
playing World he said there's like 2 200 words I mean I've always said what's so great about it is that it's just one
00:53:51
word and it's just so simple and like it takes up so little of my time I've played the other ones like where you get
00:53:58
to do a bunch of them and if that's what Wordle was I don't think any of us would be playing it anymore cuz you'd all be burnt out after the one day of super fun
00:54:05
I think that's key we talked about halflife I think the halflife of wle was extended dramatically because you only
00:54:11
spend a small amount of time playing each day if you went through a ton of words in a twoe period the halflife
00:54:16
would be a quick burn this one I think it's got legs for a little while longer I don't see why I would stop playing it it's I can always find that amount of
00:54:24
time in my day to do it super worth it thanks again to Josh for making it and congrats again to him for uh selling it
00:54:29
to New York Times where the inspiration come from um let me know what you guys want to know about S21 or s22 of course
00:54:36
that's that's the number one thing to let us know in the comment section but also I feel like we're on a pretty good kick of finding good guests that are
00:54:43
either creative guests have been rolling in or just ultimate connected in some way in any way that's also nice I mean
00:54:49
it was cool that you didn't mention that I played ultimate to but you oh I I felt like that was a given thought people knew that was it well now they know you
00:54:55
know well why uh you're on a guest on every podcast that's there we go there it is Play Ultimate get on way get on
00:55:02
for that's the that's the formula all right that's been it catch you guys next week see you later peace waveform was
00:55:08
produced by Adam Aluna we are partner with VOX media and our intro actra music was created by Vil and and one more
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thing this beautiful waveform mug can be bought at shop. MKBHD a [Music]