Comment by tianqi

12 days ago

They are difficult. As I'm not a native English speaker, I didn't know many of the obscure words or usages, so I actually played these games from a purely computational perspective. I discovered early on that there were a lot of at least NPC problems in them. As my English improved (partially thanks to these games), intuitions began to help me take shortcuts, as if I had become a nondeterministic Turing machine.

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tianqi

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mexicocitinluez  12 days ago

> They are difficult. As I'm not a native English speaker

Kudos to you. That would be insanely difficult. There is a lot of American-based pop culture, knowledge, and slang that makes it even difficult if you are a native, English American speaker.

  • rafabulsing  12 days ago

    Yeah, it can be pretty difficult at times. I'm quite proud of my 75% solve rate with Connections, which I'm slowly but surely improving (though the last week or so has been a bit of a regression).

    I'm almost tempted to include that stat in my next CV as evidence of my grasp of the language :p

    I always find it interesting to take a look at the Connections Bot, which gives the puzzles a difficulty rating based on how many people solve it or fail. It's not rare that I nail one rated 5/5 difficulty, just to completely fail the next day on a 1 or 2 out of 5. The gaps in general knowledge that you can have as a non native can be pretty funny at times! The groups relating to sports team names always get me.

    • mexicocitinluez  11 days ago

      > I'm almost tempted to include that stat in my next CV as evidence of my grasp of the language :p

      lol It actually is that impressive that you should.

      > which gives the puzzles a difficulty rating based on how many people solve it or fail

      Wow I didn't know that how that worked.

      And again, I am insanely impressed non-native speakers can get through those games because they're difficult even if you do know the language.

  • macintux  12 days ago

    The recent alcohol-themed Strands was brutal for me as an American. The first hint I received was utterly incomprehensible.

    To avoid spoilers, the word in rot13 is just as meaningful to me: Znyorp