[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's gre...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you
think?
Author : mkate
Score : 241 points
Date : 2025-04-05 14:26 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.whatsit.today)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.whatsit.today)
| noelpotnic wrote:
| Whatsit Daily Challenge Completed in: 1:26
|
| #5 (0:46) #2 (0:04) #4 (0:09) #1 (0:21) #3 (0:06)
|
| https://www.whatsit.today/
| Hackbraten wrote:
| Nice work, especially the minimalistic user interface. It runs
| fine on my low-powered smartphone, which is good.
| 12907835202 wrote:
| Whatsit Daily Challenge Completed in: 2:43
|
| #5 (1:18) #3 (0:04) #4 (0:46) #1 (0:27) #2 (0:09)
|
| https://www.whatsit.today/
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It's fun! There is occasionally out of order input on mobile when
| tapping quickly.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| Neat! I played a few days :) the only issue I had was that I
| found it quite easy to tap a previously selected letter, and
| that'd mess me up especially if it wasn't the last letter so far
| in that word. I think it'd probably be better to add a backspace
| button in addition to the clear one, and not deselect letters by
| tapping them.
| upmostly wrote:
| This could be incredible. Kind of like Strands on NY Times but in
| Wordle format.
| mouse_ wrote:
| 25 seconds here
|
| i feel smug
| dlgeek wrote:
| SPOILERS AHEAD
|
| SPOILERS AHEAD
|
| Today's challenge ("Sports Teams") was particularly easy because
| each one was plural. That made each one "unscramble a 4 letter
| word" instead of a 5. Might be a consideration for the future.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Check out the big brain on Brad!!
|
| I didn't spot this :-)
| card_zero wrote:
| It said LOINS is "not a valid word".
| danhau wrote:
| LIONS
| GilbertErik wrote:
| There's no professional sports team (the category for the day)
| called the 'LOINS'
| card_zero wrote:
| Oh. Well, I don't like sports of any kind. Except ones with
| robots. And stone skipping. And _maybe_ indoor bowls if it
| doesn 't get too intense.
| evan_ wrote:
| You thought there might be a sports team called the Loins?
| gweinberg wrote:
| There should be.
| linsomniac wrote:
| A coworker and my wife and I have recently been really enjoying
| https://bracket.city which is a crossword-clue inspired word game
| with daily puzzles. It does take a little while to figure out,
| I'd recommend starting off asking for hints fairly often to
| decrease frustration, but after a couple weeks my wife and I are
| on a streak of 3 days of scoring 100.
| mildavw wrote:
| Final score: 4.0 :/
|
| But pretty creative game. Thanks for sharing!
| linsomniac wrote:
| That is probably around where my first score was. :-) My wife
| and I had a 0 a couple weeks ago.
| j_bum wrote:
| Oh we absolutely love bracket city, +1
|
| I've showed it to my friends, and it's stuck. My brother shared
| it with all of his coworkers and they're now playing too.
|
| It's fun watching it "spread" amongst my social group
| linsomniac wrote:
| You've had better luck spreading it than I have it sounds
| like. Everyone I've mentioned it to has said "It's too hard"
| and I don't think has really even given it a shot.
| xnorswap wrote:
| Neat puzzle.
|
| My first wrong answer was an international spelling issue. It
| would be nice if it accepted then silently corrected based on
| equivalent international spellings, but I can also understand
| why it doesn't, sometimes it might be more crucial to the
| solution.
| linsomniac wrote:
| There is a "mayor@" e-mail you can use to submit requests
| like this and the developer has been pretty responsive.
| kbrackbill wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion, that was really fun. One I've been
| really enjoying in the same vein is https://raddle.quest
| linsomniac wrote:
| Thanks for that, I just played todays and it is pretty fun!
| tolien wrote:
| I'll quite often wind up solving this by a sort of parallel
| construction, as in rather than getting the hint I can work out
| what word is supposed to be there based on what's around it.
| Some of the clues can be _really_ cryptic.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Yes, that is the real trick when you get stuck is to start
| constructing the clues that it will eventually become.
| silisili wrote:
| Same. I saw a show HN on this a couple weeks ago and have been
| borderline addicted since.
| carmela219 wrote:
| Whatsit Daily Challenge Completed in: 0:23
|
| #1 (0:05) #2 (0:04) #3 (0:05) #4 (0:04) #5 (0:05)
|
| https://www.whatsit.today/
| soneca wrote:
| I think it has some potential, but I found today's puzzle just
| too easy. I never play for speed, but even if I was, playing on a
| iPhone, it missed a lot of touches that I only noticed when I was
| typing a few letters ahead. So I had to come back, erase what I
| typed and start over. It was annoying already, but if I was
| playing for speed, it would be a deal breaker.
| hn111 wrote:
| Very nice! On iOS it does not seem to register fast consecutive
| taps correctly, if that's fixed I would actually like to play
| this more often
| IronRod wrote:
| Same on Android
| iandanforth wrote:
| First clue of "Professional Sports Teams" and I noped right out.
| Sportsball is a pretty big red flag that the content presented is
| not for me.
| mkate wrote:
| there are actually other categories available. Check it out
| tomorrow and it won't be about sports :D
| mft_ wrote:
| Nice concept, but US-centric short/slang sports teams' names is a
| bit misjudged as the very first puzzle when introducing your new
| game to an international audience. I solved them because they're
| (mostly) words rather than them having meaning to me.
| enlyth wrote:
| I wish there was a more internationally friendly version of NYT
| Games, they're so fun and I play them daily but a lot US
| cultural knowledge is required at times
| angry_moose wrote:
| It cuts both ways.
|
| Cryptic Crosswords are almost impenetrable from the US as
| they're so deep in UK specific words, spellings, and trivia.
| zem wrote:
| there are some good american and canadian cryptics but i
| agree, it's a largely uk-centred pastime.
| angry_moose wrote:
| Interesting. Any suggestions?
|
| I've looked in the past and didn't have much luck.
| zem wrote:
| lots of suggestions here: https://old.reddit.com/r/crossw
| ords/comments/kqkbrq/what_are...
|
| the new yorker archives are a great place to start
| https://www.newyorker.com/tag/cryptic-crossword
| benrutter wrote:
| I love cryptic crossword, but there's so many "inside
| rules" that make them hard to approach for newcomers. It
| doesn't help that there really aren't a lot of good easy
| cryptics.
| spicybright wrote:
| Same complaint. Also, not to poke fun at us too hard but
| there's probably less sports fans here than the average
| population :)
|
| Really like the idea though.
| SirSourdough wrote:
| For those of you who are put off from trying the game by the
| category for today's puzzle being sports, note there are
| other puzzles from prior days with more general topics.
|
| Click the calendar icon at top of page for the archive.
| layer8 wrote:
| What the hell is "Planta" though. ;)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yep, didn't even notice they were supposed to be sports teams.
| I wondered why there were so many plural words.
| dylan604 wrote:
| These are short little words that are not uncommon even if you
| are not familiar with sportsball teams. If you struggled
| unscrambling these words, I'd suggest your vocab is just in
| dire need of expansion.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Less localized words would be better. Sports teams in the U.S.
| are not that popular outside the U.S.
|
| UI is splendid.
| gizajob wrote:
| Bit too easy to have repeat value
| MattSayar wrote:
| Fun! I look forward to seeing what future categories and words
| are. Do you have to manually curate them each day? How big is
| your backlog? Is there a way to automate it?
| mkate wrote:
| thanks a lot :) yes my friend and I are designing the
| categories and the words manually with a tiny bit of help from
| AI tools but you can't fully trust them as they try to sneak in
| 6 and 4 letter words
| MattSayar wrote:
| I have a Wordle-type clone I'm toying with and getting it to
| wrangle the correct letters is a harder problem than it
| seems. Hopefully you're able to streamline your design
| process so it's as painless as possible!
| andoando wrote:
| For mobile a button to clear the row by the word next to each
| word would be nice.
| kylecazar wrote:
| I really like it (I play the NYT games daily). The UI is slick.
|
| As others have mentioned categories could probably have
| broader/non-US content but that's easy. The site/format itself is
| great.
| markx2 wrote:
| I see - thank you uMatrix - that you use plausible.io
|
| I block all such tracking, so thanks for allowing me to play
| without that tracking.
|
| I do realise that such blocking affects your stats so if you
| could devise a way to track without using an external service
| that would be great.
| fl4tul4 wrote:
| To tell you a brutal truth, I dislike any timed game.
| massive-fail wrote:
| Same! However, I think the OP has done a good job. On mini
| games like this, I guess it doesn't bother me. I only get
| frustrated if I have invested time and they throw a timer in.
| Such a dated mechanic.
| pnm45678 wrote:
| The limiting time factor for me was the clicking around on the
| page. Allowing keyboard input somehow would be a plus.
| pnm45678 wrote:
| It seems not to accept a correct answer, "ladel" for Wednesday,
| March 26, 2025 (minor spoiler, apologies!)
| angry_moose wrote:
| "Ladel" isn't actually in the dictionary:
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ladel
|
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ladel
|
| https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/spellcheck/english?q=la...
|
| OED has it as an incorrect/unusual variant:
|
| https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=ladel
|
| It's misspelled constantly on the internet, but "ladle" is the
| correct spelling.
| pnm45678 wrote:
| I like the calendar where you can go back to play other days.
| Enhancement request: would be nice for this to have an indicator
| of which days you have already played.
| mkate wrote:
| that's a great point! thanks a lot
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| Sports teams? Who cares?
| mkate wrote:
| this is just one of the categories. There are other ones
| available and tomorrow's one won't be about sports :D
| cgomez wrote:
| I will never understand responses like this.
| DistractionRect wrote:
| I agree, today's challenge was really easy. But I did enjoy the
| other days, I played all of them!
|
| What I'd like is an option to show the answers after failing (not
| by default, so you can still choose to replay if you want). For
| instance, I cannot for the life of me get the music act that's
| associated with "FALMO".
| jihadjihad wrote:
| LMFAO?
| DistractionRect wrote:
| That was it! I was busy looking for a word rather than an
| acronym
| jpjoi wrote:
| This reminds me a lot of NYT strands, in the sense that it's
| "multiple themed rounds of classic word game format X" In the
| strands example, the base word game is a word search in which
| they break the rules a bit to make it harder. Here it's a simple
| word unscrambling. Makes me wonder what other games you could
| make by following this "themed rounds of X" format.
| pnm45678 wrote:
| Couple of minor bugs, one of which is arguably not a bug: 1. When
| you play a game for the first time it invites you to make an
| account. When you make an account, it seems to forget that you
| played that particular game already. 2. By manipulating the URL
| you can play games from the future.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| Quick UI suggestion: Let users playing on desktop type the
| letters.
| Retr0id wrote:
| I spent several seconds trying to click on the "Build your word
| here" box to put the cursor there
| spicybright wrote:
| Just worked through a lot of the puzzles. I love the concept, and
| I also like how the timer doesn't reset when you switch between
| them.
|
| 3 pieces of feedback:
|
| 1. Since your time matters, a start button before a new puzzle is
| presented would be nice.
|
| 2. I wanted to play more puzzles but didn't realize the calendar
| button up top switched puzzles till reading comments. I think
| fading the screen with an overlay with the existing buttons and
| adding a "Play Another?" button would hook people in more.
|
| 3. Some of the scrambles are too easy. Maybe that's by design,
| but an example is "PAWSN" in the apr 4th chess puzzle, it's
| stupidly obvious compared to the other words.
|
| But again really awesome content and would make an amazing mobile
| website or app.
| spicybright wrote:
| Could you share how you pick each day's words?
| mkate wrote:
| we design them ourselves a bit of a manual process but quite
| fun
| snozolli wrote:
| "Build your word here" really confused me. I thought that was a
| text box that I was supposed to activate.
| theyinwhy wrote:
| Well done. 2 observations: when pressing the letters quickly it
| does not register them properly. I don't understand why the 5
| letter limit.
| kdamica wrote:
| Fun game but you should disallow plurals. Overall I'd say use the
| same word rules as Wordle. Almost all my words were plurals and
| so were uninteresting, but if that was fixed I would play this!
| mkate wrote:
| thanks a lot for the feedback and totally agree
| wordglyph wrote:
| Yeah I got a lot of complaints about plurals and removed them
| for https://wordGlyph.xyz
| nvr219 wrote:
| I like it!
| pure-developer wrote:
| The top hint makes it bit too easy, but I guess if there's only
| multiple valid words you need to narrow it down by some prompt
| jonplackett wrote:
| I'm not much of a puzzler, I like a crossword or a sudoku and
| that's all really - but I didn't understand what I was meant to
| do?
|
| Edit; oh ok I get it now..
|
| It could be fun but now I know what to do it's not very
| challenging. The speed is more determined by the speed I can type
| that the words. Maybe one letter longer?
| wordglyph wrote:
| I'm curious what you'd think of this one https://wordGlyph.xyz
| stephantul wrote:
| Very nice! One confusing prompt is "not a valid word" when the
| word is actually valid, it's just not the word you are looking
| for.
| mrinterweb wrote:
| I would prefer if less plurals were used. Every word in my puzzle
| ended with an 's' as a plural.
| r0fl wrote:
| Same
|
| Spurs Hawks Kings Pawns
| angry_moose wrote:
| As they're the name of US professional sports teams, that's the
| official name of the teams.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Hawks
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Lions
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio_Spurs
|
| Previous puzzles don't have many plurals, but its the correct
| choice for this puzzle.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| That was fun
| angry_moose wrote:
| A few pieces of feedback from me:
|
| 1) Keyboard input would be really nice, especially playing on
| desktop
|
| 2) A "give up" button instead of a 5 minute timeout would be
| appreciated
|
| 3) It might be more fun/challenging if you don't give the
| category, but have to guess the category after unscrambling the
| words.
| Y444 wrote:
| Product manager ex. game designer with a number of puzzle/word
| game in operation here.
|
| - Having a timer (urgency) is usually not a very good idea for
| thinky games. If you insist on having a timer consider making it
| count upwards.
|
| - Additionally as other commenters mentioned is the game is a
| time trial it needs an explicit "Start" button. Also stop the
| timer when user is not playing e.g. reading the rules.
|
| - There's no point of having a "Play again" option for a Wordle
| style daily game, the thinking part is already done, so any
| replay is just an exercise in dexterity.
|
| - It's okay to be US-centric actually, doesn't matter unless you
| are very serious about monetizing it, and even then being US-
| centric will work.
|
| - Consider showing rules for first time users before staring the
| puzzle.
|
| - Consider having some sort of overarching thing in your puzzle,
| so it's not just five words on a specific topic to guess, but
| something more, like a hidden word across all five etc. This
| makes a delightful discovery moment and sometimes might work as a
| clue.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Agree that timers suck the fun out of a game like this. I avoid
| any solitaire game with a timer for example.
| Y444 wrote:
| Some crossword people like having their timers (see NYT Games
| app for example), but as I've mentioned the timers are
| counting up, not triggering any negative conditions, and can
| be turned off completely.
| accrual wrote:
| The OG Windows 3 solitaire has an option to disable the
| timer, it's one of the first things I uncheck. I did
| "speedrun" solitaire in my computer classes for fun, though.
| :)
| megadata wrote:
| > and even then being US-centric will work.
|
| The world has sadly changed a lot in recent months.
| bdhcuidbebe wrote:
| What did I miss, did Trump replace the english language now?
| taneq wrote:
| There's a 40% tariff on the letter 'u'.
| nathancahill wrote:
| _ser paid 40% to incl_de that letter in this comment.
| labster wrote:
| You mean the American language
| ghssds wrote:
| Spanish?
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| The implication wasn't that people have stopped knowing or
| using English. The implication was that much of the world,
| except Russia and her allies, suddenly has a much great
| deal of resentment toward the US.
| zwnow wrote:
| English? Did you mean USAlish?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| The timer doesn't matter.
|
| Nobody needs rules for this game.
| xyst wrote:
| This is 90% of my thoughts as well.
|
| Another note I had is: keep the words to a specific category
| rather than a broad category.
|
| For example: the today's puzzle of "professional sports teams"
| had 4/5 of the teams from the NBA. The 5th answer was either
| the Detroit "Lions" (a professional _American football_ team)
| or more likely the London "Lions" (a _British_ professional
| basketball team).
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I live in the EU. I have no idea about US hand-egg teams. As
| long as these are proper words (e.g. Bucks, Lions) and they
| are not "rizzz" (or whatever other moronic sound comes out of
| people with 45 IQ) then people will play the game.
| wordglyph wrote:
| Love your feedback on https://wordGlyph.xyz it just got Webby
| nomination
| FlamingMoe wrote:
| "a timer (urgency) is usually not a very good idea for thinky
| games" 100% agree. I hate the timer on the NY Times mini
| puzzle. I like these types of simple games for unwinding, and a
| timer makes it more stressful.
| binarymax wrote:
| Contrarily, I love the mini timer, because it's something to
| beat. The mini is too easy of a puzzle. The NYT crossword is
| more for the thinking type - it also has a timer, but its
| less in your face and I don't feel the pressure.
| sharkweek wrote:
| I agree - me and several friends had a rolling text convo
| where we'd share our mini times each day in a fun daily
| competition.
|
| Has since faded but anytime I think about it I like to load
| up the puzzle app and do it.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| This reminds me a bit of Boggle which really needs a timer.
| If anything, the timer on this is too long: I did it in 0:32
| and was better than 53% of other users, which suggests to me
| the timer should be about a minute
| ohnoabigshark wrote:
| The overarching "thing" in the puzzle is a great idea. Choose a
| column that spells another answer when you get them all right.
| Works even if you expand the size of the word grid.
| godelski wrote:
| First off, I love the game. Your mom isn't just placating you.
| It is fun.
|
| Second, I think given all this advice a real clear example can
| be seen by looking at NYT's Wordle[0]. Instructions are the
| first thing you see and cover the puzzle. You then click start.
|
| Importantly, the instructions have an example. While the puzzle
| is extremely intuitive, an example can eliminate almost any
| ambiguity (intuitive for most people but maybe not kids, non-
| native English speakers, or just things like someone shoves the
| game into their friends face. Who knows). There can be a button
| on the side to show instructions again, which should cover the
| puzzle and stop the timer. > Having a timer
| (urgency) is usually not a very good idea for thinky games.
|
| Personally, I like the timer. The game is simple and clearly
| meant to be played in a small fast setting, so I think this
| works. Can also reduce pressure (as well as induce) since
| someone might think "oh, I got 5 minutes to play" instead of
| having to "sit down".
|
| There's plenty of "thinky games" that have timers: Jeopardy and
| Wheel of Fortune are two good examples. Almost any TV game is
| timed. I don't think there's a problem with this and the
| pressure can make it fun while also conveying that it won't
| take a person all day. > There's no point of
| having a "Play again"
|
| Could be good to show solutions. If not, maybe also count
| "attempts"? IDK
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html
| huijzer wrote:
| > It's okay to be US-centric actually, doesn't matter unless
| you are very serious about monetizing it, and even then being
| US-centric will work.
|
| As a European who on a typical day uses/watched/reads more
| English than my native language, I agree. Except sports teams
| and other more locally phenomena. Those are the worst.
| cognomano wrote:
| May be making the countdown optional will be better. I like it!
| 4887d30omd8 wrote:
| This is good feedback. Is there a single resource you would
| recommend for someone somewhat interested in game design?
| nrjames wrote:
| I made a word game while playing with a few ideas, like anonymous
| usernames and leaderboards. I still poke at some aspects of it.
| There's a rare scoring bug I need to isolate and fix. Anyhow,
| feel free to look. :)
|
| https://www.gorillasuit.io/
|
| Edit: coming up with a reasonable algorithm for scoring is far
| more difficult than it looks. I guess most of the word games
| floating around don't have scoring for a reason.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i think this was a bad first puzzle for posting on hn, seemed a
| bit on the easy side as well, but nice concept
| Alifatisk wrote:
| What professional sports team has the letters 'P', 'R', 'U', 'S',
| 'S'?
| angry_moose wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio_Spurs
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Ahhh, thanks!
| tlarkworthy wrote:
| It was spurs that made me think it was UK centric, lions as
| well is valid for England too
| youaskiansjjd wrote:
| Boring and derivative.
| megadata wrote:
| Might want to have an international version too?
|
| I don't know US sport teams.
| bbayer wrote:
| For some tips :) https://theunscrambled.com/anagram-solver
| bilater wrote:
| Cool. I think low hanging fruit to add drag n drop. Some options
| are libraries like dnd-kit or hello-pangea/dnd.
| IronCoder1 wrote:
| Fascinating glimpse into the potential of AI to enhance
| development velocity. While the current capabilities are
| impressive, I wonder about the scalability and generalizability
| to more complex projects. Definitely a space to watch - tools
| like this could be transformative for developer productivity if
| limitations can be overcome.
| ph4evers wrote:
| Love it!
| LtWorf wrote:
| Why is "loins" not a valid word? AFAIK it is.
|
| I am the maintainer of parolottero, another word game (I made it
| to be used on plasma-mobile) and finding good word lists is not
| easy at all.
|
| I have a decent one for italian but not for english. Which one
| are you using?
| Retr0id wrote:
| It's not the name of an americentric sports team, though.
| jayknight wrote:
| I didn't even notice the category until you said that, and
| was wondering the same thing.
| tartoran wrote:
| For anyone interested in word games there's a very fun and free
| wordle like game I ended up playing daily for the past year,
| check out https://www.threemagicwords.app/ I'm not the author so
| this is not a shameless plug, just a good game that is playable
| on your phone without installing any app.
| tasuki wrote:
| Oh no, that is crazy addicting. I usually don't fall for these
| types of things, but immediately got hooked on this one.
| wordglyph wrote:
| Nice work! I know how much work these things are! I made this one
| https://wordGlyph.xyz please ask your mom if she thinks it's
| great.
| nabeards wrote:
| Stop spamming the thread, sheesh.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| So I actually like the timer and potential competitive aspect of
| it. If you want to lean into that, consider adding leaderboards
| and percentiles.
| joshdavham wrote:
| Will you open source this by any chance? I'd be curious how it
| was built!
| frankdenbow wrote:
| Nice work! Would like to see what the correct result would have
| been for ones I didnt get after the time expires. Keep going!
| skupig wrote:
| Nice UI, but I think someone needs to say it: there's no novel
| concept here, I've seen the exact same game printed in magazines
| and on kids' menus. If you're trying to catch people's attention,
| you need a clever gimmick that they haven't seen before.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Yeah, I don't really get it. Five unrelated anagrams? I was
| expecting something to happen but it's just the anagrams that I
| did in a fraction of the time given despite not having a clue
| what sports those teams play, assuming they exist.
| rco8786 wrote:
| At first I though I was supposed to make one word using one
| letter from each row. I think that might be a fun variation,
| honestly.
| chester195 wrote:
| This was super fun and just played the whole back catalogue.
|
| SPOILER BELOW
|
| Took a few games to notice but one minor issue is that in each
| game the pattern for each row is the same, e.g 3rd row is
| 2,4,1,3,5. Randomising this would make it better.
| bkvvldmr wrote:
| Love it!
| cgomez wrote:
| Pleasant and responsive lightweight design, but the game itself
| just has no difficulty to it.
|
| Tried four puzzles and all were done in 15 seconds.
| wileydragonfly wrote:
| I like it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-04-05 23:00 UTC)