[HN Gopher] Show HN: MidWord - A Word-Guessing Game
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Show HN: MidWord - A Word-Guessing Game
Author : minaguib
Score : 17 points
Date : 2025-06-10 18:42 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (midword.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (midword.com)
| jmpavlec wrote:
| A little presumptuous to say it is the world's "favorite"
| guessing game... But I had fun for a few words. It was nice you
| could press the enter key on mobile and keep the keyboard up.
|
| Are you thinking of doing a daily word? Or just a random
| dictionary word each time you refresh?
| minaguib wrote:
| It's a random word each game (but the URL is shareable with a
| friend to play the same word).
|
| TBH I've had it up as-is for a decade as a classical web app,
| but just converted it to a frontend-only app to eliminate most
| hosting costs.
| glaucon wrote:
| Out of interest what did you use (framework, or 'no
| framework') for the frontend-only ? Anything you feel like
| you've learnt from the process ?
| minaguib wrote:
| I've always been a backend/systems kind of guy.
|
| For the frontend for this I used Vue.JS as a learning
| experience. Overall it was straightforward and quite
| pleasant.
|
| The hardest part was the mental process of giving up on
| server-side business logic enforcement (such as anti-
| cheating). At the end of the day ... "it's just a game" :)
| radpanda wrote:
| I think I prefer alphaguess.com's simpler interface
| minaguib wrote:
| I like it as well - especially the logical top-input-bottom
| layout
| pardner wrote:
| Nicely implemented screen layout. Curious if you've thought of
| reporting metrics showing how many guesses it's taking people? (I
| got 'volatile' in 9)
| minaguib wrote:
| I have a decade's worth of guess statistics per word.
|
| Unfortunately, I just converted it to a frontend-only app to
| eliminate hosting costs, so I have no good location to keep
| tracking these stats.
|
| Theoretically, "Oxford English Dictionary estimates that there
| are around 171,476 words currently in use in the English
| language", the log2() of which is around 17.38 - I have no
| historical data for 'volatile'
| SamBam wrote:
| Hmmm, but the shortened dictionary being used is presumably
| less than that, so my best-so-far of 17 is probably below
| optimal...
| aqme28 wrote:
| Pretty cool! Obviously the best strategy is binary search, but
| it's pretty hard to figure out the best choice for that on the
| fly.
| _tqr3 wrote:
| > binary search
|
| Hence the word "Mid".
| sarpdag wrote:
| It was fun. I don't know if I would play again or not, but played
| 2 times without losing focus.
| flipnotyk wrote:
| I got "Negociate" after like 20 tries, the spelling of which I've
| never seen. I ended up using the hints to figure it out. When I
| clicked on the link of the word it took me to a "No results found
| for negociate!" page on Dictionary.com. Pretty frustrating, might
| want to double check your word list.
| minaguib wrote:
| Thanks - cleaned up the list a bit with the help of AI
| glaucon wrote:
| I typed 'mountain' (without the quotes), pressed "GO" and I got a
| tooltip saying "only letters a-z are allowed" . This is
| Firefox/Windows.
| glaucon wrote:
| I then went back to the home page and started again and
| 'mountain' was accepted.
| glaucon wrote:
| Otherwise, I'm enjoying it !
| minaguib wrote:
| Thanks - I've removed the pattern validation for now
| uptown wrote:
| Had the same problem with a different word. Chrome / Mac.
| cardamomo wrote:
| Fun game! It stopped responding when I got close to guessing the
| secret word, though. Then I refreshed the page, and my progress
| was lost. With a little bit more polish, I think I can add this
| to my daily game rotation!
| minaguib wrote:
| Aah - not sure why it stopped responding, sorry about that.
|
| I'll try to add some local state management so a refresh for a
| game doesn't lose progress.
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