6 ms·

Show HN: I made a simple daily word puzzle

114 points by triword 3y ago

gnicholas 3y ago
Might be nice if when you typed in the three letters it showed the various combinations (before/after each of the words). That way you could perhaps get ideas about other letter combos that could match.
mathieuh 3y ago
At some rapidly-approaching point I'll have no time to do anything else in the day other than complete word puzzles before the next day's appears
smcin 3y ago
It doesn't accept all valid solutions, only the one you've chosen (which I still can't figure out even after the lifelines, without bruteforcing). 2/19/2024: (spoiler) one alternative solution is 'BRA' [0], but that's not accepted. [0]: https://www.wordnik.com/words/brall https://www.wordnik.com/words/brall
- triword 3y ago
  It doesn't use obscure words. As far as I can see BRALL is an archaic alternative spelling of BRAWL that's only listed on a site for obscure words. Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster both have no result for that, so...that wouldn't really be very fun if that was the solution, would it?
  - kylecazar 3y ago
    The very first thing I did was check to see if brall was a word and then moved on when I realized it wasn't. Fun game!!! Out of curiosity though, do you ensure there is only one solution for each challenge?
    - triword 3y ago
      Programmatically, no, but I've made about 1500 puzzles and been sharing them with friends for months and neither I nor anyone else have found a double solution yet. It would happen if I picked generic clues like BR/SL/ER (not a real puzzle, don't try to solve it), but I make a point not to. As long as you pick clues that are a little more specific than that, it's actually extremely improbable, despite what you would intuitively think (I had the same thought in the beginning!). Remember that there are 4 restraints, not 3 - it has to match 3 different prefixes or suffixes, but it also has to only be 3 letters (4 letters on weekends). Sometimes I'm suspicious and I do verify them, but it's really only a risk with the compound word versions like SELL/LAW/FOX. Those I have to be more careful with.
      - Karellen 3y ago
        I'll point out that 26³ is only 17,576, so brute-force checking that there is only one solution for a given problem shouldn't be computationally difficult.
  - smcin 3y ago
    Your site only says "words" or "complete words", it doesn't reference any dictionary. BRALL is a word, albeit an obscure one [0] that is not found in most dictionaries. [0]: https://www.wordnik.com/words/brall https://www.wordnik.com/words/brall
    - bena 3y ago
      It's found in one dictionary. Last published in 1911. Brall isn't an obscure word, it's an obsolete one. I think it's fair to say that if your word isn't in Oxford or American Heritage, you shouldn't expect it to be in the result set. It feels as if you hit "BRASS" and "ZEBRA" then couldn't make it fit with "LL", then searched for "brall" hoping to have a hit. But if you used WinAMP back in the day, you'd have whipped this one in the ass.
  - xmprt 3y ago
    One solution to this problem is to have two dictionaries. One complete dictionary and one common dictionary. You pick puzzles using the common dictionary and then check the obscure/complete dictionary to make sure there are no alternate solutions.
    - triword 3y ago
      If I omitted any puzzle with alternate obscure solutions, the vast majority of puzzles would be invalid. There are a lot of obscure words. If on the other hand I set it to accept the alternate obscure solutions, that actually could ruin the puzzle in my opinion. Take today's with BRA for example - it's a nigh-certainty that the commenter suggesting BRA did not know the archaic alternate spelling of BRAWL. What's much more likely is that they saw "BRASS", then checked ZE and saw "ZEBRA", and then thought "I wonder if BRALL is a word?" and googled it to find that it was indeed a word in a very obscure sense. Check this google n-gram for a reference of just how obscure that word is - it hasn't registered meaningfully anytime in several centuries. I added in the word "quine," another obscure word, just for comparison, and you can see it's orders of magnitude less common even than that. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=brall%2Cbrawl%2Cquine&year_start=1700&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=brall%2Cbrawl%... So what would start happening is people would find something that worked for 2 of 3 (which is easy), type it in cuz why not it might work, have it succeed because the 3rd option was written once by a Gregorian monk in a remote monastery in the Balkan Mountains, and be like "huh, well that's dumb." It's actually a lose-lose that would let people off easier because they'd feel like it was done just because they found something that matched 2 of 3 and happened to match the 3rd in a fairly ridiculous way. Edit: I came up with a solution to this. I'll verify each puzzle against a full dictionary with obscure words included, and if a user puts in a valid obscure solution I'll display a message saying "Valid, but at least one of these words is too obscure. A better solution exists." It'll take a little time to add that functionality though.
- anthuswilliams 3y ago
  My first thought was BRA as well, but I don't see how it works with the 'LL' clue?
- tzs 3y ago
  Same for PRI. I wish it showed which words it thinks are wrong. I'l like to know if it rejects PRI because it doesn't think PRISS is a word or because it doesn't think PRILL is a word.
  - triword 3y ago
    In this case "prill" is the obscure word, sorry. I understand some people will be annoyed that the obscure words they happen to know don't work, but I think it's better for the 95% of players who would be disappointed to find that "prill" or "brall" was part of the solution, effectively giving them no chance. Each puzzle has only one solution, so if you find one that doesn't work with 1 or more extremely uncommon words, it's safe to assume that's not the solution.
    - PufPufPuf 3y ago
      You could have two wordlists, one general and one for obscure words that you use for checking answers, but not for generating puzzles.
      - triword 3y ago
        See my other comment on this subject! I think it would be a risky choice.
- triword 3y ago
  Sorry about that. If you open the browser dev tools (F12 on Windows or opt-command-J on mac, in chrome anyway), go to the network tab, and refresh and look at the network request to the /puzzle endpoint on load, you'll see the solution. Maybe I should add a reveal option for when someone feels done with it.
tolerantgravity 3y ago
That was fun! Took all three lifelines for me but I eventually got it, so the difficulty is about right.
- triword 3y ago
  I'm glad you enjoyed it! Today's is a quirky one that some people will solve at a glance and others will have to stare at for awhile. Personally I'm terrible at my own puzzle and would also have needed the lifelines.
huhtenberg 3y ago
Good idea, but the lack of progression makes the gameplay a bit tedious and not engaging. That is, you guess and it's binary - OK / NOT OK. Nothing changes. Some sort of progress would be nice, even if it's just a list of past guesses. Perhaps do what Wordle does - show if guessed letters are in the right place or present in the answer. With regards to lifelines - allow selecting which letter to reveal. Because in today's puzzle case it's obvious that it's --A, so "reveal the last letter" lifeline is basically useless.
- triword 3y ago
  I agree that puzzles with progression are the best kind. This puzzle just isn't that kind of puzzle. I didn't want to make another wordle clone, there's a thousand of those and everyone's tired of that style being copied over and over. It isn't for everyone, and that's okay! A lot of people like NYT Connections a lot hate it. Same with Spelling Bee and same with crosswords. As for the letter lifeline, I am curious how you decided that the third letter's identity is obvious. There are plenty of words that end in ISS, IZE, and ILL, not to mention OSS, OZE, and OLL (e.g. SCROLL, EXTOLL). There is also USS, UZE, and ULL, (e.g. GAUZE, TRUSS, BULL, although they don't fit.)
  - ofcourseyoudo 3y ago
    The problem is that without the progression, it leads very quickly to either brute force or giving up. The lifelines don't feel like earned progression (even if they function that way in terms of solving), they feel like a minor defeat.
  - tzs 3y ago
    > A lot of people like NYT Connections a lot hate it I was almost turned off of Connections by the poor instructions. The instructions say that categories 'will always be more specific than "5-LETTER WORDS," "NAMES" or "VERBS"'. Then one of the first puzzles I did had "PRONOUNS" as a category! That did not make a good first impression. The interface also probably turns off some people who would otherwise enjoy it. It would be greatly improved if they replaced the "Shuffle" with letting you re-arrange the words by dragging them.
btbuildem 3y ago
You made it look a lot (really, a lot) like Wordle, but you don't highlight whether any of the guesses are in the right place or present but misplaced. Perhaps choose a different design if you don't want people to associate affordances from that game with this.
borbtactics 3y ago
Cool game. Would be nice if entering a wrong answer clears the input field so it doesn't need to be cleared manually. The wrong answer can be moved to a history guesses list elsewhere so the player doesn't need to memorize their past attempts.
namphibian 3y ago
This was fun! Sadly I couldn't share my results (firefox android) - copied nothing to the clipboard?
- triword 3y ago
  Confirmed the bug on my phone. Firefox Android only it looks like. Thank you!
markx2 3y ago
Love it. Added it to my Brave startup pages which I use as a daily brain workout. Currently https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html https://www.wordiply.com/ https://www.wordiply.com/ https://travle.earth/ https://travle.earth/ https://games.oec.world/en/tradle/ https://games.oec.world/en/tradle/ https://www.namethatnation.com/ https://www.namethatnation.com/ https://playspindle.com/ https://playspindle.com/ https://playpivots.com/ https://playpivots.com/ https://triword.net/ https://triword.net/ <--- the new one
- tetha 3y ago
  Always a fun one: https://jackli.gg/chessle/ https://jackli.gg/chessle/
- Zecc 3y ago
  If I may (not affiliated to any of them): https://angle.wtf/ https://angle.wtf/ https://squaredle.app/ https://squaredle.app/ (you can also just type if you find swiping annoying) https://wafflegame.net/ https://wafflegame.net/
- me_bx 3y ago
  A few more: https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/ https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/ https://www.merriam-webster.com/games/quordle https://www.merriam-webster.com/games/quordle
jjbinx007 3y ago
Is there an option for "I give in, just show me the answer please?" because I've used all my lifelines and it's just annoying now.
- triword 3y ago
  There isn't, but maybe there should be. Sorry about that. For now, if you open the browser dev tools (F12 on Windows or opt-command-J on mac, in chrome anyway), go to the network tab, and refresh and look at the network request to the /puzzle endpoint on load, you'll see the solution.
  - jjbinx007 3y ago
    Aha! Thank you
croisillon 3y ago
not a native speaker, i tried all lifelines and have still no idea what the answer is but i noticed reloading the page makes the 50/50 keyboard different each time. so i reloaded several times to remove each letter that wasn't there every time... well it looks like there is only the M left and yet the the answer is not MMA
- triword 3y ago
  Very observant! I know that that is possible and left it in, at least for now. Sorry about that though. For now, if you open the browser dev tools (F12 on Windows or opt-command-J on mac, in chrome anyway), go to the network tab, and refresh and look at the network request to the /puzzle endpoint on load, you'll see the solution.
- adiM 3y ago
  'A' can be reused!
fallinghawks 3y ago
Sorry to put in a possible spoiler but how is it that AMA doesn't seem to be the answer? Nothing happens...
- city41 3y ago
  You need to press enter
- triword 3y ago
  Yeah, have to press enter. Would you mind editing your comment to remove the spoiler?
  - RheingoldRiver 3y ago
    I was really confused about that, I would suggest showing the 'yay you got it' screen as soon as the correct letters are entered. as it is, I didn't even see that the 'enter' key was there on the left side of the kb
blahburn 3y ago
PRI should work
vunderba 3y ago
Good job. Very similar to the NPR puzzle show which provides three full words and you have to find the common one: Cow, Flower, Hop: The answer is "bell" (cowbell, bellflower, bellhop) You can ratchet up the difficulty by allowing homophones or proper nouns, for example: Tall, Spin, Fox... My brother and I use to make them up and play each other on long car rides during summer vacations.

114 points by triword 3y ago

Might be nice if when you typed in the three letters it showed the various combinations (before/after each of the words). That way you could perhaps get ideas about other letter combos that could match.

mathieuh 3y ago

At some rapidly-approaching point I'll have no time to do anything else in the day other than complete word puzzles before the next day's appears

smcin 3y ago

It doesn't accept all valid solutions, only the one you've chosen (which I still can't figure out even after the lifelines, without bruteforcing). 2/19/2024: (spoiler) one alternative solution is 'BRA' [0], but that's not accepted. [0]: https://www.wordnik.com/words/brall https://www.wordnik.com/words/brall

triword 3y ago
It doesn't use obscure words. As far as I can see BRALL is an archaic alternative spelling of BRAWL that's only listed on a site for obscure words. Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster both have no result for that, so...that wouldn't really be very fun if that was the solution, would it?
- kylecazar 3y ago
  The very first thing I did was check to see if brall was a word and then moved on when I realized it wasn't. Fun game!!! Out of curiosity though, do you ensure there is only one solution for each challenge?
  - triword 3y ago
    Programmatically, no, but I've made about 1500 puzzles and been sharing them with friends for months and neither I nor anyone else have found a double solution yet. It would happen if I picked generic clues like BR/SL/ER (not a real puzzle, don't try to solve it), but I make a point not to. As long as you pick clues that are a little more specific than that, it's actually extremely improbable, despite what you would intuitively think (I had the same thought in the beginning!). Remember that there are 4 restraints, not 3 - it has to match 3 different prefixes or suffixes, but it also has to only be 3 letters (4 letters on weekends). Sometimes I'm suspicious and I do verify them, but it's really only a risk with the compound word versions like SELL/LAW/FOX. Those I have to be more careful with.
    - Karellen 3y ago
      I'll point out that 26³ is only 17,576, so brute-force checking that there is only one solution for a given problem shouldn't be computationally difficult.
- smcin 3y ago
  Your site only says "words" or "complete words", it doesn't reference any dictionary. BRALL is a word, albeit an obscure one [0] that is not found in most dictionaries. [0]: https://www.wordnik.com/words/brall https://www.wordnik.com/words/brall
  - bena 3y ago
    It's found in one dictionary. Last published in 1911. Brall isn't an obscure word, it's an obsolete one. I think it's fair to say that if your word isn't in Oxford or American Heritage, you shouldn't expect it to be in the result set. It feels as if you hit "BRASS" and "ZEBRA" then couldn't make it fit with "LL", then searched for "brall" hoping to have a hit. But if you used WinAMP back in the day, you'd have whipped this one in the ass.
- xmprt 3y ago
  One solution to this problem is to have two dictionaries. One complete dictionary and one common dictionary. You pick puzzles using the common dictionary and then check the obscure/complete dictionary to make sure there are no alternate solutions.
  - triword 3y ago
    If I omitted any puzzle with alternate obscure solutions, the vast majority of puzzles would be invalid. There are a lot of obscure words. If on the other hand I set it to accept the alternate obscure solutions, that actually could ruin the puzzle in my opinion. Take today's with BRA for example - it's a nigh-certainty that the commenter suggesting BRA did not know the archaic alternate spelling of BRAWL. What's much more likely is that they saw "BRASS", then checked ZE and saw "ZEBRA", and then thought "I wonder if BRALL is a word?" and googled it to find that it was indeed a word in a very obscure sense. Check this google n-gram for a reference of just how obscure that word is - it hasn't registered meaningfully anytime in several centuries. I added in the word "quine," another obscure word, just for comparison, and you can see it's orders of magnitude less common even than that. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=brall%2Cbrawl%2Cquine&year_start=1700&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=brall%2Cbrawl%... So what would start happening is people would find something that worked for 2 of 3 (which is easy), type it in cuz why not it might work, have it succeed because the 3rd option was written once by a Gregorian monk in a remote monastery in the Balkan Mountains, and be like "huh, well that's dumb." It's actually a lose-lose that would let people off easier because they'd feel like it was done just because they found something that matched 2 of 3 and happened to match the 3rd in a fairly ridiculous way. Edit: I came up with a solution to this. I'll verify each puzzle against a full dictionary with obscure words included, and if a user puts in a valid obscure solution I'll display a message saying "Valid, but at least one of these words is too obscure. A better solution exists." It'll take a little time to add that functionality though.
anthuswilliams 3y ago
My first thought was BRA as well, but I don't see how it works with the 'LL' clue?
tzs 3y ago
Same for PRI. I wish it showed which words it thinks are wrong. I'l like to know if it rejects PRI because it doesn't think PRISS is a word or because it doesn't think PRILL is a word.
- triword 3y ago
  In this case "prill" is the obscure word, sorry. I understand some people will be annoyed that the obscure words they happen to know don't work, but I think it's better for the 95% of players who would be disappointed to find that "prill" or "brall" was part of the solution, effectively giving them no chance. Each puzzle has only one solution, so if you find one that doesn't work with 1 or more extremely uncommon words, it's safe to assume that's not the solution.
  - PufPufPuf 3y ago
    You could have two wordlists, one general and one for obscure words that you use for checking answers, but not for generating puzzles.
    - triword 3y ago
      See my other comment on this subject! I think it would be a risky choice.
triword 3y ago
Sorry about that. If you open the browser dev tools (F12 on Windows or opt-command-J on mac, in chrome anyway), go to the network tab, and refresh and look at the network request to the /puzzle endpoint on load, you'll see the solution. Maybe I should add a reveal option for when someone feels done with it.

tolerantgravity 3y ago

That was fun! Took all three lifelines for me but I eventually got it, so the difficulty is about right.

triword 3y ago
I'm glad you enjoyed it! Today's is a quirky one that some people will solve at a glance and others will have to stare at for awhile. Personally I'm terrible at my own puzzle and would also have needed the lifelines.

huhtenberg 3y ago

Good idea, but the lack of progression makes the gameplay a bit tedious and not engaging. That is, you guess and it's binary - OK / NOT OK. Nothing changes. Some sort of progress would be nice, even if it's just a list of past guesses. Perhaps do what Wordle does - show if guessed letters are in the right place or present in the answer. With regards to lifelines - allow selecting which letter to reveal. Because in today's puzzle case it's obvious that it's --A, so "reveal the last letter" lifeline is basically useless.

triword 3y ago
I agree that puzzles with progression are the best kind. This puzzle just isn't that kind of puzzle. I didn't want to make another wordle clone, there's a thousand of those and everyone's tired of that style being copied over and over. It isn't for everyone, and that's okay! A lot of people like NYT Connections a lot hate it. Same with Spelling Bee and same with crosswords. As for the letter lifeline, I am curious how you decided that the third letter's identity is obvious. There are plenty of words that end in ISS, IZE, and ILL, not to mention OSS, OZE, and OLL (e.g. SCROLL, EXTOLL). There is also USS, UZE, and ULL, (e.g. GAUZE, TRUSS, BULL, although they don't fit.)
- ofcourseyoudo 3y ago
  The problem is that without the progression, it leads very quickly to either brute force or giving up. The lifelines don't feel like earned progression (even if they function that way in terms of solving), they feel like a minor defeat.
- tzs 3y ago
  > A lot of people like NYT Connections a lot hate it I was almost turned off of Connections by the poor instructions. The instructions say that categories 'will always be more specific than "5-LETTER WORDS," "NAMES" or "VERBS"'. Then one of the first puzzles I did had "PRONOUNS" as a category! That did not make a good first impression. The interface also probably turns off some people who would otherwise enjoy it. It would be greatly improved if they replaced the "Shuffle" with letting you re-arrange the words by dragging them.

btbuildem 3y ago

You made it look a lot (really, a lot) like Wordle, but you don't highlight whether any of the guesses are in the right place or present but misplaced. Perhaps choose a different design if you don't want people to associate affordances from that game with this.

borbtactics 3y ago

Cool game. Would be nice if entering a wrong answer clears the input field so it doesn't need to be cleared manually. The wrong answer can be moved to a history guesses list elsewhere so the player doesn't need to memorize their past attempts.

namphibian 3y ago

This was fun! Sadly I couldn't share my results (firefox android) - copied nothing to the clipboard?

triword 3y ago
Confirmed the bug on my phone. Firefox Android only it looks like. Thank you!

markx2 3y ago

Love it. Added it to my Brave startup pages which I use as a daily brain workout. Currently https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html https://www.wordiply.com/ https://www.wordiply.com/ https://travle.earth/ https://travle.earth/ https://games.oec.world/en/tradle/ https://games.oec.world/en/tradle/ https://www.namethatnation.com/ https://www.namethatnation.com/ https://playspindle.com/ https://playspindle.com/ https://playpivots.com/ https://playpivots.com/ https://triword.net/ https://triword.net/ <--- the new one

tetha 3y ago
Always a fun one: https://jackli.gg/chessle/ https://jackli.gg/chessle/
Zecc 3y ago
If I may (not affiliated to any of them): https://angle.wtf/ https://angle.wtf/ https://squaredle.app/ https://squaredle.app/ (you can also just type if you find swiping annoying) https://wafflegame.net/ https://wafflegame.net/
me_bx 3y ago
A few more: https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/ https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/ https://www.merriam-webster.com/games/quordle https://www.merriam-webster.com/games/quordle

jjbinx007 3y ago

Is there an option for "I give in, just show me the answer please?" because I've used all my lifelines and it's just annoying now.

triword 3y ago
There isn't, but maybe there should be. Sorry about that. For now, if you open the browser dev tools (F12 on Windows or opt-command-J on mac, in chrome anyway), go to the network tab, and refresh and look at the network request to the /puzzle endpoint on load, you'll see the solution.
- jjbinx007 3y ago
  Aha! Thank you

croisillon 3y ago

not a native speaker, i tried all lifelines and have still no idea what the answer is but i noticed reloading the page makes the 50/50 keyboard different each time. so i reloaded several times to remove each letter that wasn't there every time... well it looks like there is only the M left and yet the the answer is not MMA

triword 3y ago
Very observant! I know that that is possible and left it in, at least for now. Sorry about that though. For now, if you open the browser dev tools (F12 on Windows or opt-command-J on mac, in chrome anyway), go to the network tab, and refresh and look at the network request to the /puzzle endpoint on load, you'll see the solution.
adiM 3y ago
'A' can be reused!

fallinghawks 3y ago

Sorry to put in a possible spoiler but how is it that AMA doesn't seem to be the answer? Nothing happens...

city41 3y ago
You need to press enter
triword 3y ago
Yeah, have to press enter. Would you mind editing your comment to remove the spoiler?
- RheingoldRiver 3y ago
  I was really confused about that, I would suggest showing the 'yay you got it' screen as soon as the correct letters are entered. as it is, I didn't even see that the 'enter' key was there on the left side of the kb

blahburn 3y ago

PRI should work

vunderba 3y ago

Good job. Very similar to the NPR puzzle show which provides three full words and you have to find the common one: Cow, Flower, Hop: The answer is "bell" (cowbell, bellflower, bellhop) You can ratchet up the difficulty by allowing homophones or proper nouns, for example: Tall, Spin, Fox... My brother and I use to make them up and play each other on long car rides during summer vacations.