[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 : 464 points
Date : 2025-04-05 14:26 UTC (1 days 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.
| Kiro wrote:
| I thought this was way too hard. I didn't figure out a single
| word and even failed the tutorial. Seeing everyone loving it
| makes me feel really stupid.
| linsomniac wrote:
| I do think it is something that is a bit of a learned skill.
| I've done around 30 of them and the earlier ones I did rather
| poorly on, and even within the last 15 puzzles I had one
| where I scored 0. But the last 3 puzzles I've scored 100 on.
|
| It's not for everyone I'm sure, especially if you are
| unfamiliar with common English phrases (like "bang for the
| buck").
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I find it a bit US centric, like many of these games
| 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
| MalcolmDwyer wrote:
| https://www.minutecryptic.com/
| 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.
| jen729w wrote:
| Yeah but that's like saying that there are so many
| "openings" in chess, it makes it hard for newcomers.
|
| That's the game! The 'inside rules' for a cryptic are
| what _makes it cryptic_. Without them you just have a
| word puzzle.
| asutekku wrote:
| The thing with chess, even if you don't know the rules,
| you can still play and (potentially) lose the game. If
| you don't know some random american trivia, you're stuck
| forever.
| 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:
| Ah, fair enough! Thanks
| 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
| 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?
| 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.
| evanb wrote:
| Keyboard is essential; my time was dominated not by the time it
| took me to solve but the time it took me to click around with
| my mouse.
| 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?
| bdhcuidbebe wrote:
| Spanglish?
| 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.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| The sound "rizz" is present in the word "charisma".
| 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.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| You can still have that with a count up timer (like the GP
| suggested) but then you don't put people off like myself
| who don't want to be timed out of games
| 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
| zamadatix wrote:
| They do give the option in the settings for this reason but I
| think that's the best part about the mini specifically, it
| enables the daily leaderboards to work even for folks who's
| friend group doesn't sit down and do full Saturday level
| crosswords regularly. I think the midis/larges are a better
| balance if you're just looking for relaxing but short solo
| play and there I wouldn't really mind if the timer was off by
| default (or not, there is less competition at that point).
| tchock23 wrote:
| The timer makes it competitive. Every day I "compete" with a
| friend of mine across the country to see who can finish the
| mini crossword faster. Without that it wouldn't be fun (for
| me at least). I unwind with the bigger crossword and just
| ignore the timer at the top.
| tstrimple wrote:
| That's why I liked the suggestion of a count up timer
| versus a count down timer. It's a small difference, but
| removes immediacy while still allowing competition.
| 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.
| 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.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| I am from the UK, I hate word games that specialise with US
| English spelling over than British English.
|
| Getting the answer wrong when trying to spell the correct
| answer in British English spelling ruins the game.
| aardshark wrote:
| Nah, it's very annoying to be country-centric. The NYT game
| clues are just so fucking American sometimes and it's very
| irritating. It's difficult to avoid this altogether of
| course, but staying away from sports and politics helps a
| good bit.
| 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?
| Y444 wrote:
| If you want a general overview try finding a book called
| "Fundamentals of Fame Design" by Ernest Adams. It is a
| sensible intro, after that - just dive into thematic
| communities and do your own things.
|
| I know nothing about formal game design education sorry.
| redbell wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! I found it on amazon:
| https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Game-Design-Ernest-
| Adams...
|
| Also, because the keys "F" and "G" are adjacent in the
| keyboard layout, I believe you made a typo in the book
| title where you wrote Fame instead of Game.
| Y444 wrote:
| Yes, sorry about that.
|
| I'd love to learn "fame design" though haha
| jtafurth wrote:
| I thought for a moment it was a really interesting
| wordplay which I did not understand.
| bagels wrote:
| I agree about the timer. I almost quit after 10 seconds because
| of the timer.
| ugh123 wrote:
| >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.
|
| What if i'm handing it to a friend/spouse to play to beat my
| time?
|
| >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.
|
| That just sounds like your idea for a different type of game. I
| like his current idea for this game.
| Y444 wrote:
| >What if i'm handing it to a friend/spouse to play to beat my
| time?
|
| I generally find it more effective to improve the parts that
| concern most of the audience, like the timer that is seen by
| every player. The pass-and-play use case is valid but seems
| pretty rare.
|
| >That just sounds like your idea for a different type of
| game. I like his current idea for this game.
|
| Yes, it's a part of giving feedback, the author might not
| like any of my comments and is free to ignore them, it's
| their game. But why do _you_ seem so irritated about it?
| gnatman wrote:
| I don't think that commenter is irritated-- they're making
| gameplay comments just as you are, comments that you too
| are free to ignore.
| Y444 wrote:
| Fair enough, I somehow imagined a wrong tone of voice in
| their message, shouldn't have done that.
| SamBam wrote:
| > The pass-and-play use case is valid but seems pretty
| rare.
|
| The NY Times Mini Crossword specifically has a "Clear"
| button for this very use-case.
| scottmf wrote:
| > What if i'm handing it to a friend/spouse to play to beat
| my time?
|
| then that works better with his suggestion for a timer rather
| than a countdown
|
| you could retain a challenge aspect by showing average time
| to solve (or your result compared to others; "You did better
| than 94% of people!" etc)
| bahmboo wrote:
| Thank you. I really appreciate product people.
| Anon4Now wrote:
| > - 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.
|
| You've essentially described the Jumble puzzle, which appeared
| in daily newspapers. It's been around since 1954, but I'm not
| surprised to see it reinvented since few people get a daily
| newspaper anymore.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumble
| redbell wrote:
| >..you are very serious about monetizing it
|
| Ads aside, I'm curious to know what you think would be a good
| monetizing strategy for this kind of games (simple, online):
| subscriptions, sponsorship, donations..?
| Y444 wrote:
| Unfortunately, I think ads is the most realistic way to go.
|
| Sponsorships and/or donations would be a nice "beer money"
| bonus.
|
| Subscriptions are PITA and too much hassle unless you're
| doing them via some third party and they won't bring a good
| amount of money at the "online daily puzzle in a browser"
| scale.
|
| There are more exotic ways like licensing your puzzles to
| other sites, like online newspaper puzzle pages, Puzzmo is
| going in this direction IIRC.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| I think the timer exists since there are only so many 5 letter
| words. And you have just shown players the letters.
|
| You can complete this by just starting words with the letters
| available of which there are only so many combinations.
| slig wrote:
| Hi! I'm working on a project that could benefit from that kind
| of experience. Do you offer consulting services?
| Y444 wrote:
| Sorry, I don't have capacity for more than a few comments
| here or a casual chat once in a while.
| Kuyawa wrote:
| What's the best way to monetize a game like this?
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| I really dislike your suggestion to eliminate the timer. You
| frame it like it's objectively the better choice since you're a
| professional - however it's not. It's a design decision that
| leads to a sense of urgency that many players enjoy. Games
| don't need to be for everyone. This drive towards the most
| universally appealing, milquetoast design decisions neuters
| games.
| oliwary wrote:
| This is really good feedback I think. My puzzle has an
| overarching thing with down direction also forming words:
| https://squareword.org/
|
| I think that would not work here as there are though as there
| are not enough combinations. I quite like this one though,
| combining the unscramble mechanic with a category. A bit like a
| combination of connections and waffle.
|
| For the "play again" issue, in my latest game
| https://spaceword.org I made it an open-ended puzzle, where
| there is no correct answer, so people can keep improving as
| long as they want.
| wordglyph wrote:
| You got some fun games! I like your simple direction ui on
| spaceword. And I enjoyed the time it took to solve square
| word. It's good to have play again so players can get better.
| I implemented it on https://wordglyph.xyz for same reasons.
| It's nice to see players discover the stick strategy over
| time and get better.
| aerhardt wrote:
| Reading comments about a puzzle game coming from a "product
| manager ex. game designer with a number of puzzle/word game in
| operation" is one of the main reasons why I come to HN.
| 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.
| tuukkah wrote:
| Seconded. It's somewhat similar to this one as well.
| eps wrote:
| This is really good. Thanks for mentioning it.
| 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.
| 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
| latexr wrote:
| > Almost any TV game is timed.
|
| For the benefit of the audience watching, not the player. You
| wouldn't want someone consuming the whole show because they do
| not make a move. There's little reason to care about time
| limits on a game someone plays by themselves.
| esperent wrote:
| > Personally, I like the timer.
|
| Personally, I hate the timer. It makes me feel stressed. I
| guessed the first word then decided to stop playing because of
| the timer.
|
| It's clear while some people appreciate it, many people won't
| play the game if it has a timer. So, make it optional.
| godelski wrote:
| There's a 5 minute timer you can effectively guess all
| permutations in that time. Ignore the timer. The only real
| limitation is coming from you.
|
| There needs to be some limit like how wordle limits the
| number of guesses. The timer is good in that it can put
| pressure in especially considering how simple the game is.
| The long length means almost everyone has enough time
| 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.
| bbstats wrote:
| Little too easy
| windowshopping wrote:
| Is this a word game? In all honesty I don't see how it isn't just
| 5 anagrams with a related theme. I don't know if I'd call that a
| word game.
| whiterook6 wrote:
| It's nice but it takes a million clicks to get to another day's
| puzzle. Tap to close the results page, Tap the toast to show the
| close button, tap the close button, tap the calendar, tap the
| day. Maybe some big left and right arrows at the top of the page?
| whacko_quacko wrote:
| I like it
| tuukkah wrote:
| I think you shouldn't include proper nouns (like there's one in
| the Apr 6 solution).
| mottaquikarim wrote:
| I ended up building a word game last year for the wife and I to
| play, we kinda forgot about it but this post reminded me (so
| thanks for that, OP)
|
| Just visited and turns out some people still play!
|
| https://playfreestyle.co/new
| maest wrote:
| > Professional Sports Teams
|
| All American teams, so I got very few of them / care very little
| about them.
| ShamilDibirov wrote:
| Would be great to have "Hint" button
| electromech wrote:
| I love the game! I hate hate hate the timer though. Other than
| the timer I'd happily add this to my daily word game routine.
| thecmrfrd wrote:
| I like this concept! I've seen other games like
| https://wordputt.com which try to go semantic instead of
| categorical.
| willf wrote:
| I so hate timers. I left immediately. Sure, have a count up timer
| for those who what it, but make sure to allow it to be turned off
| permanently
| anonu wrote:
| Reminds me of https://www.sporcle.com/
| ucirello wrote:
| les circuits de consecration sociale, sera d'autant plus efficace
| plus la distance sociale de l'objet consacree - Bourdieu
| rcyeh wrote:
| Nice! One nit: if playing an archive game (from a previous date),
| when opening the calendar, would you show not the current month,
| but the month of the game? This would make it easier to go back
| to other dates.
| coldtrait wrote:
| I like it because it scratches my jumble itch.
| bhtru wrote:
| Someone needs to tell me what word could there be with TCAAN?
|
| What dictionary are you using OP?
|
| edit: IT'S CATAN.
|
| Smh
| genezeta wrote:
| While the game is ok, there's unfortunately a problem on Firefox
| on Android.
|
| I know, who cares, only three people in the planet use Firefox on
| Android. But if you want to know anyway...
|
| The problem is the sizes are not adjusted correctly and so the
| fixed header/upper part overlaps the scrambled word list, almost
| completely hiding the first word. You can, through some tricky
| scrolling, manage to see it and then solve it. But it's tricky.
| And ugly.
| MrJohz wrote:
| Fwiw, I am one of the other two people with Firefox on Android
| and am not having this issue, so it might be a question of
| screen size rather than browser?
| genezeta wrote:
| Could be, but I've tried on the same phone on Chrome and it
| works there.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| The other guy checking in here. No problems with FF on
| Android for me either
| genezeta wrote:
| Ok then. I'll assume it's something on my part.
| stevage wrote:
| It should show instructions the first time, without prompting. I
| was just confused for a long time.
|
| The icons at the start and end of each row were distracting and
| confusing.
| glitchc wrote:
| Great idea, like the game. Thanks for making and sharing!
| rao-d wrote:
| First of all, great game, just the kind I love. Personally, I
| love the timer. I can see varying opinions though. Perhaps a
| toggle for easy mode (no timer) or hard mode (timer, track and
| beat your own time)
| div3rs3 wrote:
| Nice job! Pretty fun game.
|
| Only improvement ideas I have are for a smoother start for new
| players:
|
| 1. Let the user start the game themselves so that they have a
| chance to read the rules without a stressful first impression.
|
| 2. Use a different label text than "Build your word here" as it
| sounds like a drag and drop target rather than an output.
| samg19 wrote:
| - love the concept, it was unclear at first how to delete a
| single letter when the button clears the whole word. - I see the
| comments about a timer but maybe the user can have the option to
| enable/disable. - Ability to make words more challenging -
| ability to play previous day games - pop-up instructions for new
| users - would my mom know what to do when playing for the first
| time?
| moomin wrote:
| One small piece of feedback: typically these games do not allow
| proper nouns, because there's too many of them. So having "Catan"
| be a valid word is pretty awful.
| pope_meat wrote:
| My favorite part about your game is the A B testing with your mom
| liking it and not liking it.
|
| Your mom liked the game I played with her too.
|
| Got em.
| eps wrote:
| On an older iPad I get "Application error: a client-side
| exception has occurred while loading www.whatsit.today (see the
| browser console for more information)." neatly centred on an
| otherwise blank page.
| admiralrohan wrote:
| It starts the timer before I can understand what it is. So
| annoying.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| Cool - it's nearly a subset of Jumble, which I prefer because of
| the secondary mechanism of solving a pun to guess backwards.
| hn8726 wrote:
| What I don't get is whether the mechanics of selecting letters
| are supposed to be significant. It's pretty odd to click `a b c`,
| then missclick `a` again and end up with `b c` which means I have
| to click `b` and `c` only to go for `a b c d` all over again
| n-gauge wrote:
| Just feedback from me: I enjoyed it and found it non frustrating
| to use. Not sure if I would create an account for it though.
| greybox wrote:
| That was fun, thank you! Whatsit Daily Challenge Completed in:
| 3:28
|
| #1 (1:02) #2 (0:43) #3 (0:29) #4 (0:43) #5 (0:32)
|
| https://www.whatsit.today/
| jamesdhutton wrote:
| It was fun. Couple of suggestions:
|
| - It gave me "TCAAN" which stumped me. Afterwards I pasted it
| into the Internet Anagram Server, which failed to find any
| acronyms for it. So I can say with some confidence I don't think
| it's a valid word. Suggest making sure you're using a dictionary
| similar to Wordle's one.
|
| - The game should reveal the solution at the end if the player
| fails to guess any words.
| bogtog wrote:
| Catan! (of settling fame)
| jamesdhutton wrote:
| Ahhh. Proper noun though right? I would suggest excluding
| proper nouns.
| kevincox wrote:
| Yeah, it was a bit strange but it did fit the theme of
| board games which was a solid hint.
| djaychela wrote:
| Came here to say exactly this. I let the timer expire and was
| expecting to be able to see the answer rather than resort to an
| anagram solver site...
| SamBam wrote:
| The game ought to make it explicit that proper names are
| allowed.
|
| But, personally, I would remove proper names, to make it more
| like most other word games (wordle, spelling bee, jumble,
| etc.). Crosswords do have proper names, but they've got the
| clue context to go with them.
| ascorbic wrote:
| I like it, but here's my feedback:
|
| - let me use keyboard input - don't include proper nouns! I did't
| get catan because I wasn't expecting that - show the answers at
| the end. Still didn't get catan after, and anagram solvers didn't
| find it. It was only when I came here that I saw the answer
| derdi wrote:
| Nice game. Tedious to use on a laptop with a trackpad. You should
| allow keyboard input.
|
| Managing accounts is a huge headache both for yourself and for
| your users. It's a bunch of code and responsibility for you to
| manage people's private data securely. It's one more password to
| manage for your users. You could just use cookies to track daily
| progress, like catfishing.net does. So what if that doesn't let
| me have my data available across browsers? It's just a game,
| tracking progress does not matter that much.
| ms7892 wrote:
| Addictive. What was third word?
| nkrisc wrote:
| Saw timer, closed tab. Would try it if there's no timer.
| dr_ wrote:
| Is there an option where if you don't guess a word, it tells you
| what it was (at least after the timer is up?).
| tlh wrote:
| It can be a slog to build and release a game like this, so well
| done on getting it out! Personally, I think it's quite well
| polished UI wise. UX wise I guess keyboard input as others have
| said would be nice. On mobile I really want to drag the letters
| to re-order them, - but - at the same time it works just fine.
| We've had loads of feedback for https://puzzlist.com/stackdown
| and I felt pretty overwhelmed so if you feel like that, be
| encouraged, squint your eyes and see all the positivity from what
| you've made!
| uptownfunk wrote:
| It's good, well done
| y-curious wrote:
| I got the letters "AACNT" and even cheated online. The only word
| online dictionaries could make was "TACAN" and it wasn't
| accepted.
| tczMUFlmoNk wrote:
| Since the category is "Games", the answer is [Settlers of]
| CATAN.
| 1000100_1000101 wrote:
| I got stuck on Catan for a while too, as I assumed it was like
| most games and didn't use names.
|
| At some point I just moved on, and solved the next word, Chess,
| in like 2 seconds. The results claimed I spent a whole pile of
| time on Chess, since it has no idea which result I'm thinking
| of solving (though all the wrong guesses for Catan should have
| been a clue that the time should have gone towards Catan.)
|
| I'm not sure the per-word time values are useful if they can't
| be trusted to be accurate.
| ulfw wrote:
| Your mom loves you. Cherish that! I wish mine was still alive
| astura wrote:
| I hate anagrams.
| dybber wrote:
| Didn't see that there was a theme at first, and I think after
| trying some of the other dates having that theme makes it too
| easy
| wrsh07 wrote:
| This is fun! I like the timing challenge but for many people this
| is a turnoff (there's a great interview with Zach Gage^ where he
| discusses research - some people are unable to critically think /
| learn new things while under pressure)
|
| So giving a sandbox where there is no pressure will probably be
| more fun for a large subset of players
|
| My only real complaint: please include a puzzle version number in
| the auto copied share link so that if I solve yesterday's you
| know that's different from you solving today's
|
| Incidentally you could probably let people try historic puzzles
| from the link if you wanted (compete on that one vs play
| today's), that would be a nice wordle feature
|
| ^ I think the humans make games podcast
| nisse72 wrote:
| I like the idea but there were several examples where I found a
| word but it was not the word the game wanted, and I was told
| "invalid word". Examples: I found "STONE" but the correct word
| was "NOTES", or "SPILL" vs "PILLS" etc. Extremely frustrating!
| nazgul17 wrote:
| And don't forget TONES!
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