Why I Cheat at Wordle: A Working Definition of Cheating - Part II

A Forest Primeval

There is an old Zen koan, "If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?"

Similar to quantum experiments that seem to show that light is definitively neither a wave nor a particle until it is observed, the essence of the paradox of the falling tree is that a sound has no independent existence: it exists only in the context of an (auditory) observer.

Sound does not exist until there is someone to hear it.

Is cheating the same?

You might argue that there is no cheating without intent or without an observer: if I am studying in a way that (I have convinced myself) works better for me than the strict definition of "spaced repetition," that that is my business alone, and that the notion of "cheating" doesn't apply. If you argue this, of course, you still have to answer whether—like the nature of light—the non-cheating act can retroactively become cheating if I do something later, like publish the results on Instagram or apply for some international spaced memory award, or if I'm at a dinner party, impress all the guests with how I remembered them from the last year, and simply fail to disclose, in the moment, how I managed to do so.

On the flip side, you might argue that cheating is a kind of moral absolute—that if the rules of spaced repetition state that I must evaluate a fact only from memory, that I have "cheated" regardless of whether there is any competition, gain, or loss. If you argue this, of course, you might have to say that my friend, the fundraiser, did cheat because the implicit rules of remembering people imply actually remembering them, not studying facts about them as though they were facts about the pituitary system the night before a biology exam.

So, let's discuss our first category of cheating: a violation of the rules of the game.

Memory and Cheating and Skill, Oh My

Outside of ethics, it is important to adhere to the rules of a game not just because they are rules, but because the rules define the game, and without a good, common set of rules it is impossibly to meaningfully claim that a group of people are playing the same game.

Once you agree that everyone is playing the same game, most people will say that rules exist in competition to create a level playing field so that the winner or loser of any contest is decided by some combination of luck and skill and not by advantages unavailable to the opposing players.

Memory is interesting for our purposes because it is generally an advantage in strategy games generally, and Wordle specifically, and because, as we've discussed, most kinds of memory can be simplified into the ability to memorize lists.

You could compare a person with extraordinary ability in this field to be similar to an athlete with exceptional ability in any other kind of sport. In athletic competition, we're used to the idea that there are multiple paths to excellence. These might include biology (the capability you were born with), training (the effort you put into the continuous and often relentless pursuit of excellence), technique (the precise patterns and skills you acquire and how you combine them in practice or competition, and equipment (the advantages you gain as a runner from shoes matched to your running style or as a cyclist from a frame matched to your body.).

To these, we might add the psychological quality of grit, or determination—the inner strength to push through training plateaus, exhaustion, and personal adversity past where others would falter or give up.

Rules—apart from being the things that give games meaning and make them interesting—are there, at least allegedly, to ensure that the playing field is fair and equal for all players and that excellence is a product only of biology, training, technique, equipment, and grit.

The Edges of Permissibility

With that understanding of rules in hand, we can take our earlier definition of cheating and frame the aspects positively so that they define what is permissible rather than impermissible and combine these with the notions of skill and expertise to arrive at a working definition of fair play:

• Adhering to the rules of the competition or assessment.
• Limiting areas of advantage of any given party to those that come from natural ability, training, technique, and (permitted) equipment.
• Maintaining ethical standards, including behavioral transparency.
• Upholding core human values and principle of doing no harm.
• Respecting the integrity of the contest or the assessment as a whole.

Returning to the question that began it all, you would probably argue that maintaining a large set of index cards falls within the allowance for permissible equipment and is not "cheating" because index cards (a) are inexpensive and portable and (b) don't materially affect the most critical skill of fundraising, which is about how to build and maintain relationships and persuade people to feel good about parting with their money for a cause.

Still, even if you argue this, you will have to admit that defining permissible equipment will be difficult and that it will be very tempting for competitors to skirt the edges of permissibility—even to the point of poor sportsmanship—whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Because this series is about software just as much as it is about cheating, what is permissible and impermissible in equipment will become increasingly important as we go on. Similarly, how the nature and definition of a sport change as the technologies applied to it evolve will also play a greater role over time in our understanding of not only gameplay, but software generally and innovation specifically.

The Belly of the Beast

For now, let's agree that "cheating" means improving your performance in some way that is outside the above categories of advantage. If you are building an Olympic cycling team, for example, you can select the strongest people (biologically), train them using the most modern technologies, refine their techniques, and issue them the best bicycles—all that is "fair," with no cheating involved.

But you can't modify their genetics or give them performance-enhancing drugs, and most people would say that there also has to be some kind of limit to assistance or innovation, set by some agreement in the community—and usually institutionalized by the sport's governing body—that you can go only so far and no further, or you can no longer be said to be competing on an even playing field with everyone else.

We will ignore, for now, that there are a lot of advantages conferred by money and time and that it is hard to believably claim that it is purely athletics and not the financial and technological resources available to developed and highly industrialized countries that create winning Olympic teams year after year.

And we will ignore, for now, that while index cards are cheap, baggage fees on international flights are not, and that it is hard to believably claim that someone with a good cause but without the financial resources to fly around the world all year with a lot of weight in the hold is playing the same game as someone with them.

What we want is a level playing field that doesn't force us to reflect too much about the distribution of global wealth, national eugenics programs, or who elects the tut-tutting members of these governing bodies in the first place and what interests they might have outside of the fairness of the sport.

With these caveats in place, we have a working—albeit imperfect—model of what it means to compete, what it means to be fair in that competition, and, specifically, a way of understanding what role memory plays in strategy games and what latitude we will and won't allow in assisting memory with training, technique, and (again, most problematically for us) equipment.

We did not succeed in defining "cheating" rigorously, but we did succeed in coming to the possibly discomfiting understanding that whatever definition we have will at least be subjective, if not outright inconsistent, but that having some definition is better than having no definition at all.

And with the weight of that ambiguity on our minds, we arrive in Las Vegas.