[HN Gopher] Show HN: Nine Letter Word - Daily Puzzle
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Show HN: Nine Letter Word - Daily Puzzle
I've been playing Wordle and remembered this puzzle game I used to
play with my grandfather. It's inspired by the block puzzles in
many newspapers but made to be shorter: just guess the nine letter
word. So I made a quick thing to play with my family like we used
to. I thought you guys might enjoy it.
Author : mahin
Score : 58 points
Date : 2022-02-05 08:58 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nineletterwordgame.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nineletterwordgame.com)
| pharmakom wrote:
| I dislike how you cannot make incremental progress in this game
| (compared to wordle, hangman, etc)
| flazor wrote:
| First thing I tried was was tapping the letters to fill the
| answer input. Might be a nice feature to add.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Even better if you can rearrange them within the square.
|
| Much like you would on a Scrabble rack.
| mahin wrote:
| Definitely. Would tapping a selected letter deselect it? I
| thought it might be a bit confusing if you deselect a letter
| that's not the latest one. Maybe a 'Clear' button would help.
| flazor wrote:
| I'd say tapping an unused letter would disable it and grey it
| out. Then have a backspace button to remove latest letter,
| re-enabling it in the grid.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| No need for deselecting. Just add Undo and Reset buttons and
| that'll do it nicely.
|
| For a minimalist version of the same, add just the Undo
| button and do a full board reset on long-press.
| montroser wrote:
| I think a 'Delete' button which would delete the latest in
| order. So tapping the letters would act like typing on a
| keyboard, and 'Delete' would like Backspace.
|
| NYT Spelling Bee works like this and it's a pretty similar
| interface.
| smeej wrote:
| You just need a 4th row with a back button to delete, a
| refresh button to reset, and an OK or check button to
| submit.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| The presentation of this is nice but if you're hoping this might
| blow up like Wordle then you'd need a few more gimmicks because
| what you've built there is basically just a Countdown Conundrum
| (https://wiki.apterous.org/Conundrum) laid out as a square; and
| there's already lots of these puzzles online (plus literally
| decades of TV footage from Countdown too, eg
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n9aILIF_ms).
| boudin wrote:
| At the same time Wordle is just the game Lingo, no?
| culi wrote:
| Yeah I don't the fact that it already technically exists
| plays much of a factor in how likely it is to blow up. Every
| now and then a new game/app comes out that renames some
| Japanese puzzle game and blows up.
|
| E.g. "hashiwokakero/fences/hashi/chopsticks" or
| "slitherlink/fences" or anyone of Conceptis' (underrated)
| apps
| culi wrote:
| Wow you weren't kidding. I just looked it up and the rules
| for Lingo are virtually exactly the same! 5 letters, 6
| guesses, and everything
| Max_Ehrlich wrote:
| This is really cool. First thing I looked for was a Wordle-type
| "share" button.
|
| Maybe add a Wordle-style share button? Then everyone can play
| this with their friends.
| krallja wrote:
| It's at the top, now.
| neogodless wrote:
| "Share" seems to just use the built in device sharing, and
| shares the URL. It's much more interesting if you can copy
| your personal results (how long it took, if you got hints) to
| your keyboard and then share it however you like!
| krallja wrote:
| On iOS it shares:
|
| Nine Letter Word #5 29 seconds 0 hints
| neogodless wrote:
| I'm on Oxygen OS 10.3.8 (based on Android 10) and I got
| the mediocre "share to app" menu. I chose Gmail to see
| the text, and it was just the URL. I'll blame about 50%
| on this share menu, since it doesn't even include
| "clipboard" (which is weird, I've had that in the past on
| Android, but maybe OxygenOS removed it for some inane
| reason), but I'd still prefer the "copy to clipboard"
| default behavior that Wordle/Dordle/Nerdle have.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| On FF on quite-old Android 7.0 I chose share (within the
| web page), then "copy to clipboard" and the text is:
| https://www.nineletterwordgame.com/
|
| Not quite what I was expecting! If I send to notepad then
| the first line is "null" and the second is the address as
| above.
|
| I did 23s but I think the grid form makes it much slower,
| I prefer it Countdown (a UK television quiz) style, just
| in a row.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| Really nice puzzle design. Just a few UI/UX things:
|
| I was confused by the fact it lets you enter a letter more times
| than appear in the box. It would be nice to have the same limit
| that prevents you entering more than 9 letters, for when you
| enter too many letters. It would also be good to have a
| transitory popup explaining why you can't enter more letters.
|
| The "incorrect" popup should go away after a while, or be
| manually dismissible.
|
| I think the enter button should be a more stand-out colour.
|
| Because the word "ANSWER" is in all-capitals, it looks like it's
| an example guess, but it's only 6 letters, which is a little bit
| confusing. I'd suggest making it Titlecase and left-aligned.
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| Cool idea. I would suggest verifying the solution server side. It
| took me just a few minutes to figure out how to get the answer in
| the browser's console because the solution is given on the client
| side.
| snowman-yelling wrote:
| Why can't you just play the game without cheating? Same thing
| can be done with Wordle...
| xigoi wrote:
| I found it unclear whether the letters can be placed in any
| order, or it has something to do with the grad. You might want to
| clarify that it's just an anagram.
| greenyoda wrote:
| I liked the "shuffle" feature. Shuffling a few times helped me
| figure out what the word was.
| mahin wrote:
| I need to change it so it doesn't shuffle letters in an order
| too close to the solution. Maybe 3 letters in the same order is
| too similar?
| redlohr wrote:
| Any of the eight tuples should probably not be in order ( or
| just let one of them through ). An easier method might be to
| limit shuffling to once every minute.
|
| Neat concept!
|
| edit: burningfrog's suggestion is an alternative to shuffle
| that would be even better
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30221479
| jmull wrote:
| That's quite nicely done.
|
| Since it's timed, I suggest to show the timer.
| smeej wrote:
| I didn't realize it was timed until I finished reading the
| directions.
|
| I'd have liked an option where it didn't show the letters until
| I chose to reveal them, and started the timer at that point.
|
| I knew the word right away, but tapping the letters didn't
| enter them, so I went to read what I thought would be the
| directions, which didn't help me with that specific question,
| and then finally figured out I just had to type the answer in
| the box and submit, so I wound up 25 seconds in instead of <5.
|
| Obviously these are first-use-only problems, but they'd be nice
| improvements for first-timers!
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(page generated 2022-02-05 23:01 UTC)