Reintroducing Smegle! Quickies Posted by Jonathan Capps on 17th April 2022, 11:33 Well, since we’re all in the mood for rebirths, Smegle’s having a little bit of relaunch today. The original version was all well and good but it was guilty of being a tad on the easy side, and so we’ve had our finest minds working hard to firstly work out how to make guessing harder and secondly steal all the mechanics from Wordle so its daily mode will work. We’ve also changed where’s it’s hosted. Please, contain your excitement… Get your New Smegle here! It should all be self explanatory. The original version is preserved as ‘Casual Continuous’ mode, but be sure to complete your ‘Difficult Daily’ every day to maintain your streak and share it to Twitter so everyone can not give a fuck about your achievements. Have fun!
Wonderful stuff! My initial thought was “hmm, but isn’t that a little bit too difficult?”, until I realised that the image does get more revealed with every incorrect guess. Also, I’m glad I completed the inaugural DD before coming to this post, or International Debris would have just spoiled it…
Ah, good. No shade on ID, I understand screencapping has become more second nature after weeks of the original mode.
I’m a touch confused. The image I screencapped is the same one I saw when I opened today’s challenge, so I didn’t think there would be any spoiler issues. There’s nothing on it that would give anything away.
Also, in making this I realised your article copy says ‘Daily Difficult’ whilst the Smegle itself calls it ‘Difficult Daily’
I’m a touch confused. The image I screencapped is the same one I saw when I opened today’s challenge, so I didn’t think there would be any spoiler issues. There’s nothing on it that would give anything away. OK, I’m now a lot less impressed by your first guess victory. (I got it in 3, btw).
Good game. Got it in 3. I take it the squares are revealed in the same order for everyone? Btw I spotted a little error on the info page. “pesky quares”?
Did you not see any squares obscuring the image? Oh dear. Safari for iOS. You might want to get it sorted before tomorrow’s!
Admittedly don’t remember or recognise the scene, guessed in 4 based on general context and elimination.
Did you not see any squares obscuring the image? Oh dear. Safari for iOS. You might want to get it sorted before tomorrow’s! I did it on iOS (well specifically iPadOS – so it was calling the desktop site) and it worked as it should. Just checked on my iPhone and its working as it should too (latest OS for both)
Ok, shit, it seems older versions of iOS Safari don’t like what we did with grids to make the reveal effect. I’m trying to figure out how to fix it but are you able to test with Chrome or Firefox on your phone and see if they work correctly?
Just had a look on my computer. I can confirm I would not have got it in one had it been working correctly on my phone.
I got the first one in two guesses, and really in retrospect my first guess doesn’t quite fit the shot.
Tried it properly on Firefox and the episode name suggestions aren’t coming up as I type them. Edit: same on Chrome.
I log on to G&T, get excited to see a new and improved Smegle being promoted, only to follow the link and find:If this is an elaborate jibe at TOS still being down them fair play
Tried it properly on Firefox and the episode name suggestions aren’t coming up as I type them. Edit: same on Chrome. Tried it properly on Firefox and the episode name suggestions aren’t coming up as I type them. Edit: same on Chrome. Have you got some sort of system wide content blocker installed? Though I ask that knowing I Safari extensions and don’t have an issue.
I actually got the 404 page too when I first followed the link this morning, after it was posted in the comments of the previous post. But I tried again straight after and it worked. (And it still works now, crucially.) I assumed that I just caught Smegle by surprise when I knocked at its door earlier, so I just had to give it a couple of seconds while it put its pants on.
Doesn’t work at all on mobile Chrome for me – just get the 404.Does work on Edge of all things though!
Worked on mobile Chrome for me. Even if I’d been able to see the whole thing it would still have been a complete guess – I really need to properly rewatch that era. Fun, though!
How odd. Mobile Chrome is what I’m using too (specifically, Android) so presumably it’s not the browser choice alone that’s the issue.
Update: Safari on my mac brings up the full image without squares, and typing doesn’t bring up title options to click either.
Update: Safari on my mac brings up the full image without squares, and typing doesn’t bring up title options to click either. And yet, it is working for me fine on my Mac.
Got todays in 3. I really thought the first square was something completely different (that there was a part of a character in there) but I couldn’t have been brimming over more with wrongability
Aha, got the exact same score 2 days in a row. Will be interesting to see if “No idea, no idea, oh it’s THAT episode” will be a common outcome for me. Minor detail, but it’s nice to see the Twitter intent now adds in the date too. 👍 I also manually added in the text version of the score like Wordle does, and I hesitated about whether I should format it like “III/VI” – but ultimately decided to just go with standard numerals.
What in the name of fuck is going on Safara 15.4 on Mac – got a 404 error and then hit the link again and it’s working fine. Did nothing (no cache clear, or refresh), simply retried it and it’s ok. No glitches with Firefox 99.0.1 on the same Mac. No issues at all on Safari iOS 15.5 on iPhone 12 or iPad Pro. BUT…get the 404 error when hitting the link in Duck Duck Go. Again, it disappears after revisiting and loads correctly. And was able to recreate the exact same behaviour on Google for iPhone. Loads with a refresh, so seems to be a “first visit” glitch. Worth stating that I never use either of those other browsers to visit G+T, and have certainly never used Smegle from there.
While I’m here and reporting glitches; the commenting system seems to have stopped playing nice with paragraph breaks. Comment above was separated into three paragraphs before I submitted it. (Safari 15.4, Mac).
RIGHT. * The 404 thing and the ‘search not working’ thing seem to be part of the same problem of it not autoforwarding to https properly. Should be fixed now but if you every get any problems like this press Ctrl and F5 (Windows) or Command R (on Mac) * I can replicate the reveal squares not loading on an older iPhone and apparently iOS does have patchy support for the styles I’ve used to achieved them, but the fact it’s so random who does and doesn’t see the bug is driving me mad. I’ll keep looking into it but if you encounter it try making sure your iOS and Safari app are all up to date as apparently later versions should be fine.
While I’m here and reporting glitches; the commenting system seems to have stopped playing nice with paragraph breaks. Comment above was separated into three paragraphs before I submitted it. (Safari 15.4, Mac). Oh, that’s been a thing for a good while now. I’ve gotten pretty used to immediately editing most of my comments after I post them to put the line breaks back in. Another slightly odd thing is that when you reply (like I’m doing now) a line break gets automatically added to the beginning of the comment, before the quote block. I assume this would get removed automatically like all line breaks do, but still.
I thought today’s was going to be more calculatedly fiendish once I realised what version of a character I was looking at, but still went for the safe option. I don’t know if the Catchphrase-style reveals are the same for everyone or random, but I could only interpret the first square as a Last Day party hat or something.
I think the revealed squares are guaranteed to be the same, because I looked at both today’s and yesterday’s Difficult Daily in Incognito mode after I’d done them, and the same squares were revealed first.
I got it in 2 today, which was very jammy as I thought I could see something episode-specific in the second square that, as it turned out, I couldn’t.
Hey, it’s possible I will be so consistently brilliant that I’ll never need it, but I think ideally the “Click to share on Twitter” link should appear regardless of if you succeed or fail. If I do lose, I want it on record!
Think it would make sense to link to Smegle from Smega-Drive Cappsy? At the moment, there’s no obvious route to the page without book-marking it or coming back to one of the launch articles.
Latest versions of all my browsers still coming up with no squares on my phone. I’d update my iOS but then I’d have to update my MacOS to sync my phone with my computer and that’s a very long tedious job for when I don’t have Covid. So it’ll have to wait sadly.
I got today’s in four, which I’d be pleased with except my first two guesses were from the same wrong series because I’m a fucking dope.
I got it in one, but also something of a fluke as I thought the picture was showing me something else from the same episode.https://twitter.com/quinn_drummer/status/1516289573156016134?s=21&t=Ntq5vN3lLjSCK7CRTPh1cA
Latest versions of all my browsers still coming up with no squares on my phone. I’d update my iOS but then I’d have to update my MacOS to sync my phone with my computer and that’s a very long tedious job for when I don’t have Covid. So it’ll have to wait sadly. Understandable! For the sake of science, when you get the chance could you let me know what your current iOS version is? In case the update does fix it.
I got it in one, but also something of a fluke as I thought the picture was showing me something else from the same episode.https://twitter.com/quinn_drummer/status/1516289573156016134?s=21&t=Ntq5vN3lLjSCK7CRTPh1cA Ah, but why link to a tweet if the only people who can read it are the ones already following you? Unless unless this Smegle result caused such a furore that you were forced to lock. I kind of want to believe it.
Oh, I see, fair enough. Though after the wait I’m slightly disappointed that the tweet just contains your score which you already explained, even though it was pretty clear that’s what it was. 😂 Also, a “share to G&T” button (presumably to a dedicated thread, so we’re not bumping this post forever?) seems a bit like overkill to me, and arguably antithetical to the idea of a share button. If we’re going to ignore Cappsy’s plea to stop telling him what to do, we gotta prioritise. Besides, you can always copy the tweet draft into a quote block, like so: #RedDwarf #Smegle 19/04/2022 ⬛🟨🟨🟩
That’s a thought. Can we get a “share to G&T” button? I think I’m just going to steal what Wordle does and make the share button copy the post to the clipboard so you can out it wherever you want.
That’s sort of what I meant really. Just rather than a direct to twitter, the option to paste it somewhere else. But that somewhere else would probably only ever be here
Well in that case: bonus points to the first person who posts their Smegle score to LinkedIn. Haha! That’s actually slightly tempting – I don’t use it for anything, didn’t want to join in the first place but the Jobcentre made me, can’t work now and highly unlikely ever to be able to again, so I really have no other use for it … !
Ah, got the same result as I did yesterday, B/Y/Y/G. So I guess I have a habit of repeating myself just the once huh. (Until next time when I won’t, probably.) DANGit, second-guessed myself but should have trusted my instinct. Still pretty impressive, RunawayTrain! I’ve no idea how you could instinctively know the answer from just 1 revealed square.
Got it in two today. First square gave a decent indication of the era but the second was a solid “ah, yep it’s that one” moment
Got today’s in two. It’s incredible what’s seared into your brain that you can recognise a scene from a mostly obscured image
Still pretty impressive, RunawayTrain! I’ve no idea how you could instinctively know the answer from just 1 revealed square. Whythankyou. I don’t know, for some reason that red just immediately brings that episode to mind. . #RedDwarf #Smegle 21/04/2022 🟨🟩 After a terrible, awful, terrible start to Smegle I’m enjoying them rather more now!
This is an utter fluke, but somehow I’ve got them right first time two days in a row. I should stop playing now to preserve my record, it’ll be all downhill from here. #RedDwarf #Smegle 21/04/2022 🟩
😮 Achievement unlocked! (Just a lucky guess really, but maybe my subconscious is a genius… some of the time.)
Got it in one. Although only after spending more time trying to locate which blood square I was supposed to be looking at.
Holy smokes, I got it in 1 too. I guess the ‘get every score twice’ pattern holds for now! By the way, if anyone like me was curious if something happens if you’re on the Difficult Daily page at midnight when the “New Smegle” countdown hits 00:00:00, I can confirm that nothing happens.
Got it in one. Same. Weird how intuitive this is. I thought it was another shot from towards the end of the episode, so really it was something of a fluke
Got it in one. Same. Weird how intuitive this is. I thought it was another shot from towards the end of the episode, so really it was something of a fluke Yes, me too. A pleasant surprise, really.
As a heads up, you’ll all be redirected to the new Smegle URL the next time you load the current page. This should automatically move your streak across but shout in my general direction if it doesn’t do that.
Random thought. No-one has publicly said ‘Smegle’ out loud in any way yet. In my head I always read it and think of it pronounced as smee-gle, with a long E. But it’s probably just smeg-le, with a short E, isn’t it?
Yeah, when it was first announced I thought of it like Smeagol, but have since realised it’s probably supposed to be Smeggle.
All this time I figured I didn’t have the ‘click to share on Twitter’ banner because I’m not on Twitter and your browser told it you were signed in or something. Turns out it was just because I hadn’t thought to deactivate Adblock on G&T ever.
All this time I figured I didn’t have the ‘click to share on Twitter’ banner because I’m not on Twitter and your browser told it you were signed in or something. Turns out it was just because I hadn’t thought to deactivate Adblock on G&T ever. Wait what. Ad block was hiding the green banner?
All this time I figured I didn’t have the ‘click to share on Twitter’ banner because I’m not on Twitter and your browser told it you were signed in or something. Turns out it was just because I hadn’t thought to deactivate Adblock on G&T ever. Wait what. Ad block was hiding the green banner? It can do, if you block social network share buttons. I have it on my phone (green banner but no text/click to share etc) though weirdly not my iPad, despite the block referencing being the same …I think
The green banner appears with adblock enabled for me, though maybe it depends on which adblocker you use? Another odd thing: I tried recompleting today’s DD on a fresh browser, and it said I have a streak of 0 days instead of 1 day (in the green banner, that is. The Daily Stats pop up has it as 1 for Current Streak and 0 for Longest Streak).
Another odd thing: I tried recompleting today’s DD on a fresh browser, and it said I have a streak of 0 days instead of 1 day (in the green banner, that is. The Daily Stats pop up has it as 1 for Current Streak and 0 for Longest Streak). Interesting. I’m guessing it corrects itself after the second day of the streak so it must be just a bug for the first day.
Annoyingly when I realised I recognised Cat’s costume I knew it should have taken me fewer than five guesses.
Oooh today’s is fiendish#RedDwarf #Smegle 23/04/2022 ⬛⬛🟨🟩 Gotta learn the cat costumes! You say that as if the Cat’s costume is observable prior to the 4th guess.
Oof, yeah, quite a tough one. And that’s despite Cappsy giving the blatant clue that the episode features the character of The Cat. Streak Count Bug Update: when I completed today’s DD on my primary device/browser, the share banner said I had a streak of 6 instead of 7. But once I reloaded the page, this corrected itself (and the Daily Stats are correct straight away). I realised as well that this is also what happens if you’re on Day 1. If I had refreshed yesterday, 0 would have become 1. Additionally, if you’re on Day 1, the Daily Stats remain wrong no matter how many times you refresh (Current Streak 1, Longest Streak 0), but once you’ve completed your second day this becomes 2/2 as it should be. Not sure what happens if you break your streak and resume it later, or if you fail on day 1. Oh, and I also discovered that you can totally cheat by opening the image in a new tab. (Not that I did that, of course.) But at the moment I’d prefer this functionality wasn’t blocked, because currently it’s the only way to see the full Difficult Daily image not partially covered by anything.
Oooh today’s is fiendish#RedDwarf #Smegle 23/04/2022 ⬛⬛🟨🟩 Gotta learn the cat costumes! You say that as if the Cat’s costume is observable prior to the 4th guess. You need to also identify characters at a resolution or 2×2
Today’s DD really tested my trust in there always being a revealed square to begin with. 😆 Also, I’m happy to report that the streak count updated correctly straight away this time.
Well today’s difficult is bleeding ridiculous. The starting square isn’t at all obvious!This sort of feels like the house cheating. Took me 5 goes that. Wasn’t even close until that final attempt
Well, now I’m feeling pretty chuffed about getting it in 2. I’m wondering, have we now already had the “absolute bastard” Cappsy alluded to? And if so, which one was it? Yesterday’s was the hardest one for me, but perhaps I just got lucky on the really tough one.
We haven’t! I didn’t think this one would be too hard, actually An almost entire black image on a black background covered by black squares, and you didn’t think it would be hard??
Hey, because I apparently can’t leave my QA instincts at work, I deliberately failed on my secondary browser that had a 2 day streak, and this popped up instead of the correct answer: Then when I reloaded the page, it was in its default, uncompleted state (this doesn’t happen on a fresh browser/device). Another thing I noticed is that if you refresh the page before you’ve guessed correctly, you can start the game from scratch then too. Plus, depending on the browser/device, it will keep your choices in the fields (non-applied but present) but get a bit confused about which ones are meant to be enabled (specifically, this happened to me on desktop Firefox but on mobile Chrome they all reverted to their default empty states):
We haven’t! I didn’t think this one would be too hard, actually An almost entire black image on a black background covered by black squares, and you didn’t think it would be hard?? That’s why I immediately thought of the dark episode, I solved it in a way I hadn’t been able to with any of the previous ones until a few guesses in. (Though it could have turned out to be a frame from something else and I got lucky).
We haven’t! I didn’t think this one would be too hard, actually An almost entire black image on a black background covered by black squares, and you didn’t think it would be hard?? That’s why I immediately thought of the dark episode, I solved it in a way I hadn’t been able to with any of the previous ones until a few guesses in. (Though it could have turned out to be a frame from something else and I got lucky). It is a series set in space, there’s an awful lot of black.
Got some extra oddness where wins don’t register (as in the “Guess X” turns green and fields disable but nothing else happens) until you refresh and play again. After the second victory, refreshing once reverts the page to its default state, but then 2nd and further refreshes take it back to showing the win state. Managed to get it to happen both with a 0 win streak session and a 2 win streak session, though the latter scenario I obviously can’t re-run… until tomorrow. Might have been a fluke due to already triggering the bug from this morning – seeing as it clearly didn’t happen to any of us when we having our first goes at today’s frame.
Errr … I went to the link via the URL bar rather than clicking from here, and it had yesterday’s info (guesses and answer) over the top of today’s un…boxated(?!) unemboxed? image. I won’t include a screenshot here right now because spoilers, but it was an interesting glitch. Clicking through from the link on this page brings it up properly. [As did refreshing the page, which I’ve now done after taking the screenshot.] Edit: further refreshing – inspired by Flap Jack’s comment – initially alternated between ‘play’ and ‘won’, but now stays on the ‘won’ page.
I think this might be a cunning mixture between moving to the new URL and also a bug I have hopefully just fixed. If anyone gets any problems you should get a pop-up message telling you to refresh. If anyone sees that give me a shout here and I’ll least know what’s causing it.
Sweet, the wins not registering fix looks good to me. Hugely appreciate such quick resolutions, Cappsy!
🟩I thought it was a particular scene, and it wasn’t, but that scene was from the same episode, so I’m taking it.
I think if I had seen the full unobscured image from go, I would have only improved my score from a 5 to a 4. So far it seems quite rare for these DD images to contain any objects/scenery/characters/outfits (except for The Cat’s) that clearly only appear in one episode. In the first 8 days I think only the Mechocracy and Samsara ones qualified, and even those were of the more subtle variety. One day the Difficult Daily will just be a full frame of Snacky. I can only hope that when that day comes, he will have miraculously made some more appearances – but I will settle for the easy Smegle win.
All the major ones I experienced before are good now as far as I can tell! There is still the fact that you can restart a DD game by refreshing the page before you put in either a correct guess or a 6th incorrect guess (and the browser dependent thing about whether or not it loads the page with your previous guesses already in the fields, unapplied). But considering anyone who wants to cheat can do it easily anyway, I guess the only scenario where that would be a legitimate annoyance is if you take a break in the middle of your game, and when you come back the browser automatically reloads the page.
Yeah, I’ll definitely add in something that remembers how far you’ve got to prevent that. Glad the bad ones are sorted now! I did have a long think about anti-cheat mechanisms until I realised that I couldn’t be bothered because it’s essentially impossible. We don’t have episode names or IDs in the source and that’s enough for me, I think.
Cool! Yeah I agree for sure. If you can have as many free tries as you want in private windows, preventing cheating otherwise wouldn’t be worth it. And I’m not sure you could prevent that kind of cheating either, unless you made everyone use a dedicated Smegle account with equivalent identity verification to a bank. Would be just a smidge overboard. Not sure why exactly you’d cheat at Smegle either. Though if someone is boasting about their Smegle streak in their CV or on a first date, that would be an especially embarrassing thing to be caught lying about.
Yeah, it’s a game of solitaire. No one else actually cares what your scores are (although I do, as I enjoy making people suffer) so it’s pointless to cheat.
Aw, got my first Difficult Daily loss. Didn’t even get the correct series until Guess 4! Fair play, Smegle, but remember:
Got in 4, there was a particularly good sense of mystery about it. I like it when the series isn’t immediately obvious, which might be hard to pull off.
Just realised I saw yesterdays, thought fuck that I’ll do it later, and then forgot. Anyway of knowing what it was? I got today’s in 4. The revel of Kryten’s mask helped narrow it down and then that panel got me to the series and only a couple of scenes I could think it would be prominent in.27/04/2022 ⬛⬛🟨🟩
Just realised I saw yesterdays, thought fuck that I’ll do it later, and then forgot. I wasn’t sure if I’d missed day 2. Has anyone got a 12 day streak rather than 11?
Today’s was a nice level of difficulty – not easy but gettable. I managed it in 3, but it was a bit of a lucky guess.
Just realised I saw yesterdays, thought fuck that I’ll do it later, and then forgot. Anyway of knowing what it was? Yesterday’s was Polymorph. It was of Rimmer watching his home video (but a shot where only Rimmer is in frame). I wasn’t sure if I’d missed day 2. Has anyone got a 12 day streak rather than 11? No, the first day was a Sunday, so today is definitely Day 11.
Ahhh that makes sense from the first square I remember. Presumably a part of the console/display panel?
I think that was just what the wall panelling in that room looked like – or maybe they’re crates? I should rewatch the episode honestly. Anyway, it looked very “normal” to me, so my first guess was that it was inside Lister’s house in Timeslides.
Smegle’s like an interactive John Hoare article, getting us to pay attention to the finer set details.
27/04/2022 Was thrown by something making me convinced it was a certain series for a while but the error was obvious by the fourth go!⬛⬛⬛🟩
I will say there is something dispiriting about putting in the extra effort to craft a results tweet after a loss. So I’m going to keep “a Twitter link also appears if you lose” as my No. 1 Desired Potential Future Smegle Feature.
I still think we should only have 5 guesses so you can’t brute force by series if you get the right one on first guess but not the correct episode.
I still think we should only have 5 guesses so you can’t brute force by series if you get the right one on first guess but not the correct episode. I have to come down on the other side of this one (and not just from the perspective of someone who just lost not wanting it to become even more difficult…). The 6 guesses are a key feature of Wordle variants, and I think that anyone able to immediately guess the correct series based on an image that is 96% obfuscated deserves the guaranteed overall win (when it’s not Series 7 or 8). Getting it right before Guess 6 after that point is a reward in itself.
I think that anyone able to immediately guess the correct series based on an image that is 96% obfuscated deserves the guaranteed overall win (when it’s not Series 7 or 8). A grey mosaic with dabs of flesh tone was blatantly series 1, until today’s.
Well today’s was mostly guess work. Got it in 6, after landing the correct series on the second guess.
Well today’s was mostly guess work. Got it in 6, after landing the correct series on the second guess. Hey, I got exactly the same result! I think my instincts were leaning in the right direction, there were just quite a few options that seemed to fit.
Ha, well I didn’t feel overly confident when I submitted. 80% of the time when I think “Hmm, if those squares are what I think they might be, then it’s probably this episode” I end up being wrong. I did deduce some possibilities but I wasn’t even sure I’d got the right series.
Might be a tad on the harsh side Jenuall. You have so many more new Smegles to live for. Besides, 2 is an excellent score. If it isn’t, then my pride about getting 1 might have been overstated, and we can’t have that.
A pathetic 2 for me today, should really have got it in 1 but I let myself and everyone else down I think I know exactly what you did and despite having a vague memory of which one was today’s, I made the same mistake.
I got today’s in 3, but the correct answer did cross my mind straight away, so I could have aced it, if I had believed in myself. But that’s just the way the Smegle pendulum swings, eh. On other days second guessing has lead to victory, you never know.
Not the first time I’ve got the first deduction wrong and mistaken old for new or vice versa, but it took a few guesses to orient myself today, even after counting the squares up and down and trying to remember how much of my screen each one should fill. I think I’ve got it now.
Got it in two. And didn’t even have the series from the first one. I hadn’t really been paying much attention to the colour of the squares until recently having read everyone else talking about it. Really focusing on them today properly narrowed down the potential answers.
