Colloquium-Fifty years of guesses: from plastic Mastermind to silicon Wordle.

Abstract: Since 2021, the Internet game of, Wordle now owned by the New York Times, has become a daily challenge for many people. Much online advice has been written about how to play, only some of which is good advice. Wordle strategies based on mathematical principles go back to an earlier plastic game  from the 1970s called Mastermind. After a brief nostalgic tour of some of the 1970’s colorful plastic games with mathematical content, I will discuss the mathematics of Mastermind. This includes some updates of ideas from my 1976 undergraduate research project involving information theory and statistics, as well as some different ideas from a 1976 paper on Mastermind by Donald Knuth. Then I will show how all of these ideas apply directly to Wordle.