Waffle Solver

Waffle is a online puzzle-of-the-day game like Wordle but a little harder in some ways.

Each row makes a 5 letter word and each column makes a 5 letter word.

The game gives feedback about each letter in its position to give hints about the solution.

Green means this slot has a correct letter in the correct position, this letter should not need to move.
Yellow means this slot has a letter in it that should exist somewhere in the words for that row or column but NOT in that exact position.
Gray or White means this slot has a letter in it that does NOT exist in the words for that row or column.

The actions that the user performs are to select two letters and swap them and then view the new feedback and decide what letters to swap next.

In the best case scenario, it is always possible to make the board entirely green with 10 swaps. If you do that, you get 5 stars. If you get the board with more swaps, then the star rewards are reduced by one star per swap. If you cannot make the board green in 15 swaps, then you get 0 stars and the game is over.

Here is the link to the Waffle game: Online Waffle Game

Waffle Board Letters

Waffle Board Feedbacks

Solver Results

Possible solutions are:

We recommend going through only as many solver iterations as is required to know what the final board will look like.

Optional Next Step:

In a future iteration of this project, we will also give the exact swaps needed to hit 5 stars (if the final board can be known just by looking at the board the first time; it might be one or two stars fewer if the final board is not known immediately.)

In the meantime, use these hints to help you earn the maximum amount of stars!

Hints for Minimum-Path Letter-Swapping

Any swap that will make both squares green immediately afterwards is perfectly ideal and can be performed without risk of losing stars
The most tricky swaps are the ones where you have to choose between supplying a square from 2 or more places. Those are the ones to pay attention to. I use pencil and paper to do some analysis but I will work out an algorithm for this when I get time
If you draw out the arrows between letters and where they are needed to be moved to, then you will sometimes find loops/cycles. That is a useful pattern to find because there are multiple ways to do the swaps between them but there are multiple ways of achieving that same optimal number of swaps within that cycle. So once you become familiar with that pattern, it can be performed quickly and reliably.