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Show HN: A new daily word puzzle
- danieltait 5y agoMy new daily word puzzle idea! Would love some feedback.
- crispweed 5y agoThe text you get when you click share should indicate which puzzle you solved, in some way (e.g. like the number in "Wordle 247 3/6"). Having some kind of graphic in this sharing text would feel nicer, I think, as well, somehow. (Could be just sequences of green blocks for each word, basically just showing how long the words you made are.)
- danieltait 5y agoYeah thats a good idea thanks. It will help deal with timezones as well as the letters change at midnight your time. Will have a think of the graphic I could add to sharing!
- modernpink 5y agoHow much do you hope to sell this to NYT for?
- ryan-duve 5y agoThanks for sharing. Here's some feedback. 1. I found it distracting the instructions were an image instead of text. I sometimes drag my cursor along lines in bulleted lists and was surprised the image started moving. 2. Why can I drag the directions across the page? Is that a bug? 3. The instructions are very concise and clear. 4. Why is there a `*` after `values` in the fourth item? 5. Would you enable a "click to teleport letter to next position of 'active' word" so I don't have to drag the mouse across the screen so many times? Or some other way to get answers up faster? 6. It would be nice if I had an indicator that one of the words I got fits in the global solution. How do you feel about enabling an "easy mode" or something that allows instant feedback for this? 7. It is nice you have the top possible score in the header. Would it be more obvious if it was made to stand out somehow (maybe 43/380 points or something)? 8. The interface is super clean. Nice job!
- danieltait 5y agoGreat feedback thanks! 1. Will fix this! It's because I'm using jQuery draggable for moving the letters. 2. Same as above. 3. Thanks! 4. The score is letter values multiplied by word length (will make this more clear). 5. Yes this would be a great improvement. 6. Yes this would be good. 7. Will play around with this design. 8. Thanks!
- ffpip 5y ago> instructions were an image instead of text They are text. If you ctrl+A, your browser will highlight them. There just seems to be some weird js that moves the text when you drag it.
- WilTimSon 5y agoOh, that's a much harder one than Wordle, this is interesting. I was surprised when "calc" wasn't accepted, I've heard Americans use it so often. Is it not really considered a full word?
- danieltait 5y agoHaha yes doesnt seem to be in dictionary
- worble 5y agoLooks fun, but drag and drop (at least on desktop) is just too finicky to play for any length without being frustrated. Any chance of just being able to type the letters and hit enter/up+down to change lines?
- danieltait 5y agoThanks! Yes will add this asap
- 3np 5y agoSingle click to pick next/last from bottom would be my expectation
- Majestic121 5y agoAgreed, first thing I tried was to type, it's annoying very fast to click and drag
- dmje 5y agoYes, or double click / single tap. A clear button would be great too
- bombcar 5y agoIs there a way to see the “best” solution after you try yours?
- danieltait 5y agoMy plan was to release it tomorrow as a small link at the top.
- sings 5y agoYep this would be great. I was surprised that my two 10 letter words didn’t get the full score, so would be curious to see what the winning solution was.
- 4bpp 5y agoI was dismayed to have two words rejected that I thought were by all accounts legitimate. What's the word list you are using? Since they got rejected, there is probably no issue with mentioning them here: "hoplite" and "caltrop".
- danieltait 5y agoFor first version I'm just using http://aspell.net http://aspell.net english dictionary, but I can easily switch to a custom word list. Will research best options.
- dsr_ 5y agoThose are both good (rejected words), as are pollock and bollock. The word list needs work.
- flemhans 5y agoand "baller"
- onion2k 5y agoI don't know what dictionary is being used here, but rabbiter and looper were both rejected despite being in the UK and US Scrabble Words lists. That's immensely annoying.
- dmje 5y agoI mean, maybe not immensely annoying in the general scheme of things... :-)
- onion2k 5y agoOn the scale of how annoying things are, it's somewhere between the squeaking noise my office chair makes if I lean back too far and the threat of global thermonuclear war.
- wdwvt1 5y agoOr coprolite - a killer with this set of letters.
- julian55 5y agoAlso hackable and some other -able words were not accepted.
- modernpink 5y agoRIP CHOCOLATE BALK BRED Using all letters giving a score of 227/380 There should be some hints on how to increase my score? Is this based on the word rarity?
- danieltait 5y agoThanks for playing! Right now the score is calculated by letter value multiplied by word length so longer words score more points. Open to feedback on this as wasn't sure best scoring.
- modernpink 5y agoI think a mix of word length and rarity might be the way to go. Information entropy would be a helpful approach here (look up the 3Brown1Blue video on Wordle). Also, CHOCOLATIER comes up as an invalid word.
- danieltait 5y agoThanks! Will look into this. And sorry chocolatier should definitely be accepted! Great word
- mal-2 5y agoI disagree on the rarity piece, I think it will be more frustrating if you can't predict how to improve your score. Length is straightforward because you know your strategy should always be to make the fewest longest words.
- thex10 5y agoCan you have this on the screen while solving? I think this might have been mentioned at the start but it goes away once I start trying words.
- 0xdada 5y agoI got 261 points. Spoiler: QkFCRUwgUEFETE9DSyBSSEVUT1JJQw== Edit: 272 / QkxPQgpQQUNLRUQKUkhFVE9SSUNBTA==
- junon 5y agoDrag and drop is an Anti-Feature here. Please just make it type entry.
- kreeWall 5y agoI enjoyed this and agree with many of the comments here - typing would be far easier and more fun! It might also be fun to add a "hint" where it gives you one of the words in the top scoring solution - maybe just as is, or even jumbled up. Overall, great concept and I look forward to playing more often!
- gigglesupstairs 5y agoThis seems very similar to NYT Spelling Bee? Except the central letter constraint is missing and it lays out certain letters multiple times visually. Note that in Spelling bee too letters can be used multiple times. At the least author should call this an inspiration from spelling bee. Anyways, will give it a go.
- danieltait 5y agoIn full honesty I've never seen or played spelling bee haha, but yes definitely some similarities after looking now! The inspiration came more from scrabble than anything else
- tgb 5y agoDon’t worry, it’s nothing like Spelling Bee at all except that they’re both word games. Spelling Bee is more similar to Boggle than this. I think the other commenter misunderstood your game.
- granto 5y agoFun game. Works well on iPhone 13, but doesn’t work on iPhone SE (screen doesn’t fit and there is no way to scroll). Another thought, would be great to see how score compares to others or the average, best score, fastest, etc).
- danieltait 5y agoOooh thanks will fix this asap. Yes good idea to add some stats
- danieltait 5y agoShould be working on SE now I think. Safari responsive design mode not accurate :(
- onychomys 5y agoThis is pretty great, there's a lot of potential here. I find myself wanting a "clear" button (maybe one per line?), as I try different things it's annoying to have to drag them around to different lines. And when I see the score for a set of words and realize I still have quite a ways to go, it'd be nice to just bring them all back down and start over again.
- danieltait 5y agoThanks! Yes thats a good idea will add something like that asap
- m4tthumphrey 5y agoGot 279 across 2 words with 2 letters remaining... Fun game! UkVQTElDQVRFRApST0FEQkxPQ0sKQgpI
- tyingq 5y ago308 points, 3 words, no letters remaining: UE9DS0VUCkNIQVJCUk9JTEVECkxBQg==
- aronhegedus 5y agoI liked the game. Didn't like the drag and drop.
- neogodless 5y agoOh! Yeah I came here when I gave up because typing didn't work and clicking didn't work. Didn't think of that!
- Siecje 5y agoShould tap a row and then tap letters, and tap to remove, not drag tiles around.
- scottmsul 5y agoYou should make a leaderboard where you can see everyone else's words and scores!
- danieltait 5y agoGood idea! Will develop stats/leaderboards over next few days
- christrowe 5y agoIt's great but it's just its quite an incomplete game for its release.
- iib 5y agoFor those looking for the solution, it is QkxBQ0tCT0FSRApIRUxJQ09QVEVS (inspired by the author who posted one of the words).
- Siecje 5y agoHow do I use that to get the solution? EDIT: Okay it was Base64 encoded.
- air7 5y agoVery nice. Perhaps your Twitter-share-path-to-virality could be an image of green boxes (a-la Wordle) with the lengths of the words in decreasing order? [][][][][][][] [][][][][][] [][][][] [][][][] Perhaps also with the score of each word if that's not too much of a giveaway.
- sauwan 5y agoYep, definitely need a more visually compelling way to share results. I like this suggestion.
- strangus 5y agoI like it. I wish there was a visual cue showing me on which line the tile would fall.
- jonnycomputer 5y agoNot clear what score is based on. Letters have values, but you can only use letter once, so???
- sauwan 5y agoScore = (sum letter values) * (word length)
- crtasm 5y agoPlease consider removing the google tracking
- jaggs 5y agoVery nice. Got started within 2 minutes of landing on the page, which is always a good sign.