5 ms·
Kind of fun the first time, but I think I prefer a normal crossword. Seems like the only way to progress is to pick an unfinished word and then do tons of gues
by naet 4y ago
Kind of fun the first time, but I think I prefer a normal crossword. Seems like the only way to progress is to pick an unfinished word and then do tons of guesses back to back of all the possibilities until one turns green, which starts to get boring when there are a lot of possibilities.
Feels more like stenography or data entry than playing a game at that point where you're just typing 10+ guesses without any investment in any one of them.
For example, when I tried the larger version, I got to a point of a 2/3 filled word: _ET.
I then had to sit and enter:
-bet
-get
-jet
-let
-met
-net
-pet
-set
-vet
-wet
and finally, I got to the word: yet. And that's not even including some less common but still valid words I would guess like ret and tet, which I'm not sure are off the table as possibly valid entries. It just felt like a chore more than a puzzle to get that word, and I have to repeat it over and over for the other words. Maybe as you get to a close the letter pool gets a bit smaller so you have less guesses, but that's only after you've guessed out a significant portion of the puzzle.
Wordle avoids this by giving you information on your guesses, making them feel less like a huge string of purely random guesses. Crosswords give you cryptic clues that aren't obvious, but make you feel like any guess was based on deductive reasoning rather than some brute force attempt.
Still, nice job on building and releasing the project! And it sounds like other commenters are enjoying it more than I am, so maybe I'm just a stick in the mud or I like word games too much and have too much time invested in them.
- sbf501 4y agoI agree with this. Three-letter words that dangle by one letter are just a chore. There needs to be a balance between discoverability and guessing. Perhaps the auto-generator needs to evaluate the discoverability somehow... Also, why no cookie keeping your trend? That's what keeps me coming back: not wanting to break a streak! (Not to promote dark patterns or anything.) Also also, nice UX. I found it easy to navigate, edit, and delete.
- akudha 4y agoOne way to make it more enjoyable could be to do it by topic - this way the universe of words would be much smaller, instead of the entire dictionary. Topics could be - music, baseball, food etc
- nkrisc 4y agoKind of like one clue for the whole puzzle, instead of individual ones. That sounds much more fun than simply nothing.
- danieltait 4y agoYes I love that idea! Here is one that is just from a countries list for example - https://killercrossword.com/countries https://killercrossword.com/countries
- dmitriid 4y agoKnotwords is a much better variation on this I believe: https://playknotwords.com/ https://playknotwords.com/
- danieltait 4y agoGood feedback thanks and agree this definitely happens a lot especially in the harder version of the game. Maybe I can create a smarter way to show possible letters rather than the entire letters remaining
- bagacrap 4y agoyeah it's nothing at all like a normal (ny times) crossword which is full of fun and amazingly clever word play and cultural references. There's no sense of "aha!" or awe at the puzzle's design, no chance to learn interesting facts, no reward for one's own experience/knowledge/problem solving. It's just a tedious guess and check procession.