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This was a really fun game to make. We've been playing scrabble together for years so it's nice I'm finally competent enough to code this online version. I po

This was a really fun game to make. We've been playing scrabble together for years so it's nice I'm finally competent enough to code this online version. I posted it on reddit and now over 1000 people are playing against my dad everyday haha.

anentropic 4y ago
It's nice! My only gripe is: any time you click away from the tab, when you click back to it it resets the screen (shuffles the pile and clears any letters you had placed)
- danieltait 4y ago
  Hmm yes ok I just removed the refresh now. The reason it was there is some days I opened the tab on my iphone and for some reason it still showed the yesterdays result rather than the new day's letters. Will have a think of a better way to force the refresh of the letters on a new day.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    setTimeout() with a timeout calculated to fire after midnight?
  - jfindley 4y ago
    This is still happening btw - if I quickly switch to another tab it resets the board completely, giving me a different puzzle in practice mode. This makes it sadly unusable for me.
    - danieltait 4y ago
      Sorry! I had only changed for the daily. Removed from practice and play now as well
  - wizzwizz4 4y ago
    > The reason it was there is some days I opened the tab on my iphone and for some reason it still showed the yesterdays result rather than the new day's letters. This'll be the Cache-Control header interacting with tab resume: rather than setting that to expire after X time has elapsed, set it to expire at time=T, and the browser will¹ fetch the new page instead. You'd increase the effectiveness of this technique (and reduce your bandwidth requirements for repeat players) if you made `/daily` a static page, and factored out those JavaScript variables into a separate file, fetched with `fetch` or `XMLHttpRequest` (or even a `<script>` tag, like `wordlist.js` is). If I've configured my browser to behave otherwise (e.g. it takes me longer than a day to solve each puzzle), I really don't want it overriding that and resetting on me: that would make me very sad. ¹: usually. Firefox Session Restore behaves differently – but that's expected behaviour. Every website ever behaves like that: it's what I expect, because I expect to be able to close my browser and open it again and still have more-or-less the same pages available. After all, I've got a refresh button, but no un-refresh button.
anentropic 4y ago
A couple more ideas: - could be nice to have it calculate and show the score of the word you have currently placed - when you place a tile on the DL or TL you can't see where the DL and TL are any more (I think on Scrabble board they have little triangles that stick out past the edges?) - I found myself wanting to know the 'target' score, but I guess that would change the experience a bit
- danieltait 4y ago
  1. It shows the score just above the word if it is valid! 2. Yes agree thats a good idea. 3. I could add a new game mode where it shows you the target score, but I'm going to keep dad's score hidden for my own entertainment haha
  - TheHumanist 4y ago
    Could just do a minimal outer box shadow/glow around the tile in the color of the DL or TL to remind people where they are once letters are laid down.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    It wasn't clear to me that I needed to start from the leftmost box.
    - anentropic 4y ago
      same here :)
JeanMarcS 4y ago
Well, this is very frustrating. I really wanted to play, I like the idea of competiting with your dad. But as a non native english speaker, my vocabulary is too low to give me a chance. Anyway, great idea ! (I don't know if you are aware, but in French speaking countries, competition are mostly played this way, everyone with the same letters. At the end everybody got its own points and the best word is placed on the board)
- danieltait 4y ago
  Send me a french dad and a french dictionary and I can add it this afternoon haha! Wow no I didn't know that is how the french play. I believe it is a much fairer version of the game and better tests the players skill
- playingalong 4y ago
  It's called Duplicate Scrabble: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplicate_Scrabble https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplicate_Scrabble
erickhill 4y ago
So are you like Desmond on LOST where every day, after you and your dad play, you have to run to the computer to type in the latest Dad-Word to keep the machine alive?

anentropic 4y ago

It's nice! My only gripe is: any time you click away from the tab, when you click back to it it resets the screen (shuffles the pile and clears any letters you had placed)

danieltait 4y ago
Hmm yes ok I just removed the refresh now. The reason it was there is some days I opened the tab on my iphone and for some reason it still showed the yesterdays result rather than the new day's letters. Will have a think of a better way to force the refresh of the letters on a new day.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  setTimeout() with a timeout calculated to fire after midnight?
- jfindley 4y ago
  This is still happening btw - if I quickly switch to another tab it resets the board completely, giving me a different puzzle in practice mode. This makes it sadly unusable for me.
  - danieltait 4y ago
    Sorry! I had only changed for the daily. Removed from practice and play now as well
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  > The reason it was there is some days I opened the tab on my iphone and for some reason it still showed the yesterdays result rather than the new day's letters. This'll be the Cache-Control header interacting with tab resume: rather than setting that to expire after X time has elapsed, set it to expire at time=T, and the browser will¹ fetch the new page instead. You'd increase the effectiveness of this technique (and reduce your bandwidth requirements for repeat players) if you made `/daily` a static page, and factored out those JavaScript variables into a separate file, fetched with `fetch` or `XMLHttpRequest` (or even a `<script>` tag, like `wordlist.js` is). If I've configured my browser to behave otherwise (e.g. it takes me longer than a day to solve each puzzle), I really don't want it overriding that and resetting on me: that would make me very sad. ¹: usually. Firefox Session Restore behaves differently – but that's expected behaviour. Every website ever behaves like that: it's what I expect, because I expect to be able to close my browser and open it again and still have more-or-less the same pages available. After all, I've got a refresh button, but no un-refresh button.

anentropic 4y ago

A couple more ideas: - could be nice to have it calculate and show the score of the word you have currently placed - when you place a tile on the DL or TL you can't see where the DL and TL are any more (I think on Scrabble board they have little triangles that stick out past the edges?) - I found myself wanting to know the 'target' score, but I guess that would change the experience a bit

danieltait 4y ago
1. It shows the score just above the word if it is valid! 2. Yes agree thats a good idea. 3. I could add a new game mode where it shows you the target score, but I'm going to keep dad's score hidden for my own entertainment haha
- TheHumanist 4y ago
  Could just do a minimal outer box shadow/glow around the tile in the color of the DL or TL to remind people where they are once letters are laid down.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  It wasn't clear to me that I needed to start from the leftmost box.
  - anentropic 4y ago
    same here :)

JeanMarcS 4y ago

Well, this is very frustrating. I really wanted to play, I like the idea of competiting with your dad. But as a non native english speaker, my vocabulary is too low to give me a chance. Anyway, great idea ! (I don't know if you are aware, but in French speaking countries, competition are mostly played this way, everyone with the same letters. At the end everybody got its own points and the best word is placed on the board)

danieltait 4y ago
Send me a french dad and a french dictionary and I can add it this afternoon haha! Wow no I didn't know that is how the french play. I believe it is a much fairer version of the game and better tests the players skill
playingalong 4y ago
It's called Duplicate Scrabble: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplicate_Scrabble https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplicate_Scrabble

erickhill 4y ago

So are you like Desmond on LOST where every day, after you and your dad play, you have to run to the computer to type in the latest Dad-Word to keep the machine alive?