[HN Gopher] Show HN: Whittle - A Shrinking Word Game
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Whittle - A Shrinking Word Game
Whittle is a small word game I've been working on. Each phrase must
be whittled down by one letter (or space) each turn. The remaining
phrase must still consist of valid words. That's it! There's a
daily puzzle, as well as an archive of old puzzles. The idea for
the game came to me in a dream (really) and I built the puzzle
generator with my partner, who's also a software engineer. It's a
labor of love! Any feedback or suggestions are welcome. Thanks for
playing!
Author : babel16
Score : 73 points
Date : 2025-08-05 17:39 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (playwhittle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (playwhittle.com)
| dylanhouli wrote:
| Good game! Nice little touches on the website too like the tray
| at the bottom and the header click easter egg.
| duncancarroll wrote:
| Fun! I was a bit confused at the end because there's no "victory"
| state or indication. I think I was expecting it to give me a new
| word pair once I got to the end, or tell me "come back tomorrow
| for another round"
| frankdenbow wrote:
| Came here to say it needs a victory state or a score to know if
| I got to the best possible solution.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| You can always get it down to zero letters! The game should
| remind you how many letters you have left before you can win to
| make it clear .
| Trufa wrote:
| I think I've tried every combination herbs possible, you have
| to whittle to her and the to he, and then there's nothing,
| what do you mean?
| teach wrote:
| They are saying "the win screen shows up after you click to
| remove the final letter", not "it is always possible"
| spadros wrote:
| It's solvable if you whittle down to "a"
| teach wrote:
| I didn't understand what you were saying at first, but it
| turns out that you have to click to remove the final, single
| letter before the "you won" screen shows.
|
| And I agree it would be nice if the game could detect when
| you've reached a dead end and notify you somehow.
| fao_ wrote:
| Hey! I absolutely love it! I wanted to share the results with my
| partner but it looks like the share button doesn't work on the
| PC? (Firefox 141.0, Linux)
| teach wrote:
| Is it always possible to go all the way down to a single letter?
| I'm working on August 4, and it's proving challenging
| spadros wrote:
| I'm stuck on that one too! Got 100% of all possible words but
| cannot figure out how to reduce to zero. A "show hint" feature
| would be nice when you're stuck.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Yes, 1 August and 4 August have me stumped. Interestingly it
| says I have discovered 100% of words on 1 August, but I wasn't
| able to whittle it down to 0. I'm not sure if that just means I
| missed an opportunity to remove the space somewhere.
| littlekey wrote:
| Or maybe it depends on the order in which you remove the
| letters? Just a guess.
| ipsento606 wrote:
| August 4 is not solvable with the given wordlist. There is no
| way to get to a word below 3 letters ("set")
| z_open wrote:
| I had the same issue. I went back to the calendar and it said I
| got 100% of the words. So I guess it's not always possible and
| I spent all that time trying for no reason.
| kipukun wrote:
| This game is awesome. I have no other feedback other than I had a
| lot of fun.
| spadros wrote:
| Really fun! Could use a hint function though. I got %100 of all
| words on Aug 4 but still have not found a way to get it down to
| zero letters. If anyone has figured it out please let me know!
| tobr wrote:
| If you found all the words, surely that means there is no
| 1-letter word to find? Unless I'm completely misunderstanding
| the rules.
| jsnell wrote:
| Nice! You definitely have something there.
|
| I would _love_ a dictionary lookup. I 'd expect a big part of the
| strategy to be working backwards from the possible 1/2 letter
| words, but there's no way to tell how reasonable the dictionary
| is without testing, and getting the game into the proper state to
| test would be just as hard as solving the puzzle in the first
| place.
|
| Having two separate goals (eliminate all letters, find all the
| words) seems confusing. Honestly I find the latter to be a fairly
| tedious prospect, but the game really seems to push you toward it
| especially with the colors on the calendar depending on the % of
| words found. "Damn it, I got a perfect score with no undos, and
| all I have to show for it is a red square showing how bad a job I
| did!"
|
| The UI (on a desktop) felt kind of broken at the start because
| nothing has hover effects. Anything clickable would benefit from
| some kind of an effect, but especially the letters on the words.
| If you don't want color changes or animations, at least set the
| cursor style.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| I had much more fun than anticipated. Nice work! Sharing with
| some friends
| jangerhofer wrote:
| For those who are initially as dense as I am: spaces are also
| 'whittleable' characters!
| busymom0 wrote:
| When I remove "h" from:
|
| rat he
|
| It doesn't accept "rate" as a correct word. What am I doing
| wrong?
| Retr0id wrote:
| Spaces are also whittleable characters. "rat e" is two words,
| the latter of which is not valid.
| Freeboots wrote:
| The space counts and has to be removed. Rathe is not a word,
| nor is e, so youve got to find another way.
| c22 wrote:
| This is cool, it's kind of the inverse of a game I used to play
| with my mother: One player says a letter and thinks of a word
| that starts with that letter, the next player adds a letter
| (while thinking of a valid word that that could be created with
| the new prefix). Play continues in this fashion until someone is
| forced to spell an actual word, then they lose and you can start
| a new round.
| onion92 wrote:
| WOW, we had a similar idea: https://www.shrinkle.org
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44714167
|
| Great work!
| werds wrote:
| Congrats on your imminent acquisition by the New York times (a'la
| Wordle)
| busymom0 wrote:
| I ended at:
|
| rat he
|
| I remove "h" but it doesn't accept "rate" as a correct word. Am I
| missing something?
| JadeNB wrote:
| In case anyone else finds this question before the other one,
| it was answered at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44804178.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| You need to remove a single letter while keeping the remaining
| letters in the same order - removing "h" from "rat he" leaves
| "rat e" not "rate".
| jessecoleman wrote:
| Cool, the description reminded me a bit of my word game
| https://gramjam.app, but after playing they're pretty different.
| I like your UX!
| pimlottc wrote:
| Feedback: I wasn't sure what to do in the initial game state. It
| wasn't obvious that the letters could be "clicked" directly. In a
| similar word game [0] (also posted on HN recently; perhaps your
| inspiration?), the letters are in boxes that make them seem more
| like buttons you can press. The unlabeled tabs at the bottom were
| also mysterious; many other games like Wordle have their inputs
| (e.g. a keyboard) at the bottom, so that was initially a bit
| confusing.
|
| It's also easy to accidentally spoil the game by clicking the
| unlabeled right tab. EDIT: Oops, didn't realize that was the
| words discovered list, not the complete wordlist. This should
| have a label to make it clearer.
|
| Also, in the help screen, the dots in the UI made me expect to
| swipe (on mobile) to navigate between screens, so that was a bit
| confusing at first.
|
| 0: https://www.shrinkle.org/
| redbell wrote:
| Yes, a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44714167
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-08-05 23:00 UTC)