[Aeolun]

> It could be more than the number of hydrogen atoms in the universe

Not very likely, since the OP wouldn’t be able to hash it. Or he’s secretly demonstrating something much more awesome than Passwordle.

[jhugo]

Who said they hashed it? The correct answer is a 256-bit value, and you're trying to guess any string that hashes to that value. Nothing requires that OP generated that value by hashing a string though...

[Aeolun]

Fair point, I’m just hoping that the author starts from something that could actually be input as an answer (and therefore hashes it at least once).

[eru]

> Not very likely, since the OP wouldn’t be able to hash it.

Not necessarily. OP might have found the answer with a mathematical short-cut.

To give a really silly example: suppose my hash function just returns the length of the input string. (That's what PHP used to do for hashing at some point.)

I could tell you what my hash of a really big number is, without needing to be able to write that number down. And no shorter number would have the same hash.

SHA256 might have a similar exploit. (Though as you say finding such a shortcut in SHA256 would be much more awesome than Passwordle.)

[SapporoChris]

As a proponent for advancement, I will hope for the latter while laughing at your comment.

[eyelidlessness]

Why not? You don’t need enough resources, just lazy seq and time!