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Built this game in React in ~ 20 hrs. Thought I'd share a few things I learned: 1. You can disable React Dev Tools in Prod, by including this script before Rea

Built this game in React in ~ 20 hrs. Thought I'd share a few things I learned: 1. You can disable React Dev Tools in Prod, by including this script before React loads. Because this game is 100% client side, fiddling with component state made cheating much too easy. ` if (typeof window.__REACT_DEVTOOLS_GLOBAL_HOOK__ === 'object') { __REACT_DEVTOOLS_GLOBAL_HOOK__.inject = function() {}; } ` 2. A good dictionary of English words is not easy to come by. I first tried a 25k word list, and then when I play tested for the first time, half the words I spelled weren't in there. Looking around, larger lists were in the 300k range. Eventually I found one at 70k words... I'm hashing it for easy search of words, though it makes for a slightly heftier initial load (I was hoping for 40-50k words), and it still doesn't include plurals. I'd thought about using a spell-check API, but wanted the game to be playable offline...especially if I make it into a mobile app (not sure yet). 3. There's a fun little bonus round you unlock if you score enough points. This wasn't at all part of my initial concept, but I realized it'd be neat to use the words spelled during the game to create something (it still needs work, but as they say, constraint is the mother of creativity).

sushid 9y ago
Regarding #2, shouldn't you be using a prefix tree? And even if you're using a hash, you can remove the s suffix and check to see if it's a word (i.e. check if it's a word first, if not, remove the 's' and check again). There are edge cases of course, but at this point it's probably better to have a few false positives than a bunch of false negatives.
- pcmaffey 9y ago
  [searches "prefix tree"] Sweet! Thanks for the tip, that does indeed look like what I should be using. As for plurals, that's not a bad idea. But I think the # of false positives would be > false negatives.
  - sushid 9y ago
    Quite possible. How about importing the Scrabble dictionary? Looks like there are implementation on Github that's easily <1 MB. Loved the game, btw.

sushid 9y ago

Regarding #2, shouldn't you be using a prefix tree? And even if you're using a hash, you can remove the s suffix and check to see if it's a word (i.e. check if it's a word first, if not, remove the 's' and check again). There are edge cases of course, but at this point it's probably better to have a few false positives than a bunch of false negatives.

pcmaffey 9y ago
[searches "prefix tree"] Sweet! Thanks for the tip, that does indeed look like what I should be using. As for plurals, that's not a bad idea. But I think the # of false positives would be > false negatives.
- sushid 9y ago
  Quite possible. How about importing the Scrabble dictionary? Looks like there are implementation on Github that's easily <1 MB. Loved the game, btw.