Cyrdle: goal achieved

I started Cyrdle a while ago. It was just a nice challenge and good for my Welsh. Initially it was quite a challenge, but practice makes perfect, so it got easier. and I found myself having a 98% success rate after some 200 attempts. 

Then Goodhart’s law kicked in. I wondered if I could get that number to 99%. I had had a good streak of correct answers! And if I had 98% at 200, I would manage it if I would not fail once in the next 200 attempts. And getting one was not much of a challenge, but doing it 200 times in a row still was. Was this still good for my Welsh? Or was I just chasing a metric? The latter, to be honest. But I figured it was an innocent case of chasing the measurements rather than the actual gain. 

It started fine. I often didn’t need all allowed attempts to get them! And I started to notice repetitions. So the average challenge faded a bit. But there still was the occasional adrenaline situation that I did only get the word in the last attempt. 

And then the 400th attempt came up. It wasn’t very difficult! And I got it in three goes. The answer was ‘arogl’; odour. And that had indeed brought my score to 99%! 

I will now stop. I have my metric, and I have experienced diminishing returns. But I’m glad I managed this! Nerd points duly scored…