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Show HN: 18 Words
- littlekey 3mo agoGreat little game, thanks! I found I'm terrible at the vowel heavy words like audio and ideal, interesting.
- Fourier864 3mo agoA lot of comments are suggestions and/or complaints, so I just came to say I loved it, no notes.
- genodethrowaway 3mo agoAdd a share button! a la wordle :) and a way to hide the timer would be nice, as others have said it can be stressful
- gopalakrishnans 3mo agoWould be nice to have a ‘scramble!’ button so it makes it slightly easier when we get stuck
- kraquepype 3mo agoThat would be nice! The ones I get stuck on are so obvious once the word is revealed that just a reshuffle of the letters would help. Maybe give the player 3 chances to re-scramble the letters.
- pards 3mo agoThis.
- jschveibinz 3mo agoIn Safari the refresh page button does this--found by accident.
- semiquaver 3mo agoiPhone bug: double tapping on a letter zooms in the viewport with no way to zoom back out, permanently breaking the page.
- pompomsheep 3mo agoOof yeah thanks! Fixed now
- Vinnl 3mo agoThis is fun! Could use a short "how it works" blurb on the landing page though :)
- pompomsheep 3mo agoThanks! I thought it was fun to throw people straight into the game without instructions but you think it too unclear?
- Vinnl 3mo agoI did get the first one straight away, so it's not too unclear, but it did induce a short moment of panic, which I'm not sure I'd categorise as fun :P
- asaix 3mo agoPretty cool idea. I think a calendar based UI to go through the archives would be more user friendly than what you have right now.
- pompomsheep 3mo agoYeah for sure I agree just kept it simple for now but will improve if people like it
- throwaway_ocr 3mo agoPretty frustrating when you find a word, but it's not THE word. Pretty fun otherwise.
- functionmouse 3mo agotbh this should accept all dictionary matches
- pompomsheep 3mo agoDid you find a word that wasn't accepted you thought should be? I do have another version where it accepts ANY word but I found it quite unsatisfying when I survived by randomly spamming combinations and finding a really obscure word. So am currently running it against a 20,000 word wordlist instead of my larger 300,000 wordlist
- happytoexplain 3mo agoThe third one in the archive wouldn't accept "tase" or "sate" for "seat".
- IAmGraydon 3mo ago300,000? The Oxford dictionary only contains 171,000!
- echoangle 3mo agoI guess the wordlist with 300k contains all the different forms a word can have while the 171k count is only the base words.
- pompomsheep 3mo agoHaha yeah the 300k list contains so really obscure stuff
- maxweylandt 3mo agoGoing two days back in the archive, "egret" not allowed
- pmarreck 3mo agoI didn’t realize the word “crowd“ only had one vowel until I saw it scrambled!
- maaaaattttt 3mo agoAnd I didn't realize "audio" had only one consonant!
- pmarreck 3mo agoconsonant-consonant-vowel-consonant-consonant vs. vowel-vowel-consonant-vowel-vowel Fascinating!
- neuroticnews25 3mo ago[flagged]
- shruggedatlas 3mo agoSkill issue
- tantalor 3mo agolol
- jaffa2 3mo agohaha yes. I got 2 and it said come back in 9hours. LOL. Ain't nobody got time for that.
- stavros 3mo agoI lost on the third word because I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was, and then I restarted and got to the 18th. I'd look at the letters and just know which word it was, it was pretty odd how hard I found it the first time around versus how easy it was the second. I'm normally terrible at anagrams.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- maaaaattttt 3mo agoThis was harder than I thought it would be. It's pretty fun to play! May I suggest displaying the final result and/or ongoing progress as 18 circles/shapes that fill up depending on how far you made it?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- jmkni 3mo agoHa fun little game :)
- quasiperfectus 3mo agoEmbarrassed of where I failed (#8). Very cool game though!
- al_borland 3mo agoIf it makes you feel better, I failed on #3. In my defense, I'm running on 2 hours of sleep.
- magneticnorth 3mo agoI failed on number 11, which put me in the top 20%. It's a tough game!
- saghm 3mo agoI got to 12 on the puzzle yesterday I think and I figured " okay, I might as well finish one" and started going back day by day in the archive..it took me almost a full month's worth to get an 18/18, and I think with only one exception, every single one I lost on felt like I had tried every reasonable combination in the 30 seconds only for me to see the reveal that it was an extremely common word that I was shocked I couldn't come up with. My theory is that if there's a small but non-trivial chance for our brains to for some reason fail to recognize a word, stringing together enough of them in a row will end up causing most people to suddenly have that moment out of nowhere. It kind of reminded me of that episode of Friends with the bit about writing down all 50 states in a certain amount of time; perfect consistency even for things we know well can sometimes be surprisingly hard!
- mritchie712 3mo agogreat game, what do you think of adding shuffle?
- upmind 3mo agowhat made you go with 18?
- drcongo 3mo ago14 was taken.
- giancarlostoro 3mo agoI see what you did there. I did a double take when I saw this on the front page of HN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words
- pompomsheep 3mo agoHaha I've never heard of this but lucky i went with 18
- giancarlostoro 3mo agoI'm equally laughing because I remember a coding snafu I ran into once, where we were aggressively filtering out "1488" turns out someone finally joined and "1488" was part of their user ID (auto-increment field!), and we realized maybe we shouldn't be checking the auto-increment field, not sure if it was me being too aggressive and not thinking about it, or another developer, but I did laugh once I figured out why that one user was unable to use half of the web app. This was for a gaming community based project, we had a lot of trolls come and go, and they would definitely shove these sorts of references in their usernames, and anywhere else you had custom user input. The internet is a magical place.
- pizzafeelsright 3mo agoin good faith, you went with a number. had it been 14 you would have a torrent of ill will where no excuse or response would have been sufficient in the minds of those who fail at life. We must secure equal forgiveness for the people and the future inadvertent online mistakes.
- Static2280 3mo agoSomething about not being able to shuffle the tiles makes this hard for me.
- jayemar 3mo agoAgreed, I'd really like a shuffle button
- saghm 3mo agoI noticed this made it harder two, but thinking more about it I started to wonder if that would make it possibly to just spam it for the lower length words and make it easy to brute force within the 30 second timer. After that I started only looking at the letters as a reference occasionally and trying to think through combinations in my head while looking at some of the blank space, and I found it actually helped a lot! I wonder if staring at whatever layout the game gives actually ends up anchoring in a way that hinders.
- Waterluvian 3mo agoThe timer makes it not enjoyable for me. It seems necessary to the game design and I’m not being negatively critical. Just sharing an additional perspective. I’ve been playing Zanagrams and the ability to hide the clock really improved my enjoyment of that game. If I could magically get a feature by request, it would be to give me infinite time even if that meant my score came with an asterisk. Maybe just call it Relax Mode vs. Challenge Mode. By the way: I really like the overall design of Zanagrams and 18 Words. These are small puzzle games with very simple, clean UIs. They work crisply and I've noticed you've been tidying up Zanagrams, adding minor features and settings. They have a very Classic Web feel to them. It's not like you're trying to get me to watch ads or subscribe to your newsletter or are just breadcrumbs to some for-profit thing. I like having a handful of very easy to pick up puzzles/toys when I need to fidget. They help keep me away from TikToks and Shorts.
- paisawalla 3mo agoI would appreciate the timer not turning red. It's better to be surprised that time's up, rather than be surprised to know it's running out.
- altmanaltman 3mo agoYeah I think this will be a bit too easy without a timer. But that ui does make it kind of intense, i forgot how to spell a basic word because i was thinking i only have 10 red seconds left
- tech-historian 3mo ago100% agree. Casual mode would be a winner.
- sensecall 3mo agoYep, instead of feeling like a fun puzzle the timer just adds unnecessary pressure and gets me really annoyed.
- Yajirobe 3mo ago
- nwsm 3mo agoFun! But disappointing if you lose early. Maybe let the player continue after failing and showing a final score out of 18.
- samiskin 3mo agoFun game though I wish it left more time for the longer words, also wish we could have the letters in one line and shuffle them
- gwbas1c 3mo agoMade it to 9 and then time ran out... I wish it showed me the word that I got stuck on! Argh!!!
- pompomsheep 3mo agoIt should have shown you!
- keepamovin 3mo agoDamn got to 13.
- orliesaurus 3mo agoFun, that's it. New addiction after daily wordle unlocked
- nathell 3mo agoCould I have the source code so I can plug in the Polish word list? It would make a great training app for Scrabble.
- jdthedisciple 3mo agoYou could also probably one-shot your own version of this using any SOTA LLM, it's not terribly complicated (but a nice game idea!).
- pompomsheep 3mo agoYeah its just the single index.html file feel free to download it and adapt
- binary0010 3mo agoJust one shot in Claude if you have it or deepseek flash for free.
- pocksuppet 3mo agoIt's unobfuscated. Right click, view source, there it is.
- chadgpt3 3mo agoLAMER is a real word and COLOR is not.
- gigatexal 3mo agoFun game! I got stuck on the word corner of all words. Ugh
- aosmith 3mo agoNice, this is pretty fun!
- dirkc 3mo agoI like the idea, but I didn't like losing after a few words. Now it might just be me not being good at losing, but who is? Maybe the game can always progress to the next word with your total score being reduced. So if you get all within 30 seconds you score 18/18. That way everyone can play the whole game and share with their friends how far they got: |X|o|X|X|X|o|o|o|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|o|X| 13/18
- giancarlostoro 3mo agoYeah, but also, is it really "18 words" if you don't get there?
- iNic 3mo agoOr just even having 3 lives would be nice.
- HelloUsername 3mo agoWhen I didn't know the word I just mashed the given letters on the keyboard randomly, sometimes I got lucky with it
- criddell 3mo agoMaybe the game should limit the number of tries per word?
- NooneAtAll3 3mo agoI can understand the clock running out meaning a loss - but I still want to play the rest of the words? how do I do that? I don't think they are accessible anymore
- wbnns 3mo agoGreat game, well done
- docheinestages 3mo agoThis could be a cool captcha challenge (without the timer).
- addandsubtract 3mo agoThat's not how captchas work...
- docheinestages 3mo agoPlease enlighten me on how they work. My understanding is that captchas usually either involve challenges for humans or require proof of work (some computation). I found the idea of this game along the lines of a human challenge.
- magneticnorth 3mo agoCaptchas are usually used to separate humans and bots, typically with something a human can solve but a bot cannot. A bot would have no trouble at all with this game.
- docheinestages 3mo agoI think humans don't behave the same as bots when playing this game.
- zaik 3mo agoI think it will be easy for a bot to behave in a way that is indistinguishable from some human you don't want to exclude.
- KomoD 3mo agoA bot will have no problem with the current captchas either. They're trivial to solve.
- maccard 3mo agoI like the time based ness. 30 seconds is plenty of time and one run a day is a nice change of pace from never ending feeds. Good job, I got 15/18
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- swordlucky666 3mo ago[dead]
- ecshafer 3mo agoI got the word BAITH on like turn 5, and I only chose that because I couldn't figure anything out. I thought it was a nonsense word. But mixing in a scottish slang word in the easy section was a surprise.
- nathell 3mo agoI guess HABIT was the expected one here.
- ecshafer 3mo agoBaith was right. But I feel stupid that I couldnt see Habit.
- EvanAnderson 3mo agoShuffle would certainly help with that. I felt like I was expending a ton of energy and time shuffling mentally (but I'll concede that if I did it enough I'd get faster at it).
- jader201 3mo ago> Baith was right. My wife missed that word, and it said the correct word was “habit”. I also did “baith” (for the same reason as OP), and ended up making it to 16, but I feel like I shouldn’t have, since I’ve never heard of “baith”. I was confused when it accepted it.
- arnab777 3mo agotimer removed should be better
- orthogonal_cube 3mo agoWas this by chance inspired by a previous submission (now defunct) that had a similar premise? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40536488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40536488 Edit: I believe it was transferred to a new domain at https://wordnerd.co/ https://wordnerd.co/
- jefozabuss 3mo agoI think loading the big wordlist (279496 words as of now) is a waste of bandwidth as you only need to load permutations of the words in the selected challenge (e.g. you don't need "ABANDONEES" if you don't have a word with those letters).
- pompomsheep 3mo agoVery true and it's a bit lazy. I'm load a short wordlist first and then the longer version async so it doesn't really affect how long until you can start playing. Waste of bandwidth is true. Cloudflare pages hates me
- DamnInteresting 3mo agoOne thing you can do is store a word profile in your database, which is a string of all of the letters in the word in alphabetical order. So the word profile for 'apple' is 'aelpp'. Then you can just include all of the words that match the profiles of the real words. For example, 'quiet' and 'quite' both have the profile 'eiqtu'.
- pompomsheep 3mo agoThanks everyone for the feedback! Two questions 1. For a version without the timer what would you like to happen if you are just completely stuck on a word? Hints to reveal letters or skip the word? 2. For those who like the timed version would you prefer to continue when you miss a word and then get a final score out of 18?
- matthewhartmans 3mo agoNice work OP! Love this! The timer adds more pressure and excitement. Really simple and slick game - well done OP and congrats on the launch!
- mikesela 3mo agoI like it just the way it is. Fun!
- munchbunny 3mo agoIf you're not set on a "survival mode" design, could you design it as counting up instead of counting down? And maybe showing a "par" time, that way players can opt into the challenge vs. just a morning brainteaser.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- auto 3mo agoComplete gut reaction to your first question, my preference would be two fold: 1. An option to start the game in timeless mode 2. When I fail a word, prior to showing me the word, give me the option to enter timeless mode for the rest of the run, such that it doesn't ruin the current round, and that run is now excluded As for the second, that's more suggestive and I don't care as much either way. Personally me for me I've just been going down the archive trying each day. I enjoy competitive games, so once I miss a word I don't have much interest in continuing on.
- xp84 3mo agoI too think timeless mode should be an option, and since you're telling me i'm in "top 10%" or whatever at the end, Timeless can just not be on the leaderboard, instead maybe just use a local-storage streak calculator or something to reward users instead. ^parent's #2 tip is great too, as I was sad to cut the fun short when I couldn't guess EXAMPLE today. Just minor notes though really. The game was fun and seemed nice and polished. And obviously allowing playing using the keyboard was a great idea that I appreciated.
- EGreg 3mo agoFor some reason it made me think of this right away: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words
- timothymwiti 3mo agoThat was really fun. Made it to 16/18. Thank you popmpomsheep.
- pompomsheep 3mo agoThanks for playing!
- XUEYANZ 3mo agonice game to start my day. a refresh button to reorder the letter would be great.
- santiagobasulto 3mo agoI loved it, i hated it. I'm so bad at this. I think summarizing everybody's feedback the simplest solution is: "Game difficulty". - Standard: what you have today - Relaxed: 1 minute per word? - Practice Mode: no timer whatsoever And "Practice Mode" is a completely different mode that lets you skip questions, and instead of "you win / you lose" which is today's behavior, you end up with a score (14/18).
- ShadowOfThePit 3mo agoI feel the same way, haha. It's fun, but also so infuriating!
- nickcw 3mo agoI didn't realise at first that you could choose letters which weren't adjacent which made it very hard! Guess I've been playing too much https://zanagrams.com/ https://zanagrams.com/ (which was also posted here recently).
- pompomsheep 3mo agoMy other game! Thanks for playing
- vicnov 3mo agoI think there is probably a research paper hiding inside this game. I couldn't guess Dice because, as an ESL person, I couldn't make the D-i combo sound like /d/+ /aɪ/ in my head (it sounded as /d/ + /ɪ/), so a part of my neural circuitry didn't fire, and I couldn't complete it with `ce.` In other words I, personally, in this pattern recognition game rely on the way words sounds in my head to find familiar combinations and continue the sequence.
- xpct 3mo agoOn some levels I tried guessing, starting with different letters, and still got into some local minima in my brain where I couldn't guess the word, only for it to be something obvious like 'pound'.
- Liftyee 3mo agoThis is an odd and interesting effect. I experienced it and English is my first language. Couldn't figure out "binding" because in the process of permuting the letters it got sounded out as "bin ding" which I immediately rejected as "not a word". It seems like it's intuitive to permute letters but I forget that you have to permute the sound too, otherwise it won't parse as a word.
- swyx 3mo agofor what its worth you sound ultra fluent in english, so kudos whoever taught you english
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- mkrecny 3mo agoone thing I noticed playing this: way easier with fingers on the keyboard (vs selecting characters with mouse) just typing out seemingly possible words per muscle memory / subconscious impulse
- eranation 3mo agoNicely done. A shuffle letters button would be nice.
- jll29 3mo agoVery cool. As a linguist (not a native English speaker, but highly trained), I love it a lot. Love the pressure due to the timer, and the best aid to help is say it aloud.
- forbiddenvoid 3mo agoThis is great. The speed aspect reminds me of the old AOL chatroom word scramble games. I personally love the timer, but I also do the newspaper anagrams without a pen, so I'm certain to be out of the majority on this. A shuffle button would be nice (especially if it's keyboard friendly). I've found it useful for me with the NYT Spelling Bee. Sometimes my brain just gets stuck on a letter combination because two letters are close together, and the rearrangement helps. It would be kind of fun to have an endless mode too, that just pulls words from the dictionary. Maybe not quite in line with the "daily word game" premise, but something I would personally find enjoyable.
- love0972 3mo agoI haven’t been able to post anything at all, so I don’t even know what it’s like to make a post.
- curiousObject 3mo agoThis a good game. It’s fun, simple and quick. It’s self explanatory and clear what you need to do. The UI is almost perfect, it’s seamless on mobile and desktop. I made some criticism in other comments therefore I also wanted to make a comment saying what I liked.
- andy_does_code 3mo agoThis is really fun, love the idea! I agree with the others, a chill/practice mode would be great.
- gjm11 3mo agoSome thoughts about the timer, since it's what everyone wants to talk about :-) -- I find that with things like this my distribution of times is extremely uneven: I get most words in a few seconds, but every now and then one comes along that for whatever reason my brain doesn't want to see and then it takes much longer. (And if that "much longer" is over the 30-second limit, too bad, I lose.) And something about this makes playing with the timer annoying for me: I feel some combination of "surely I should get some credit for getting all those others so much quicker than the timer allows" and "oh, come on, that was just unlucky and doesn't reflect what I can generally do". (I am not claiming that it's right to feel anything like that. Just that I do and I suspect I'm not alone.) I wonder about a mechanic like this: the timer starts at 30 seconds; when you solve a word, rather than resetting to 30 seconds the timer increments by 10 seconds. So if you're solving in <10s on average then (at least after the first few, easier, words) you can afford to have the occasional brain failure without getting thrown out of the game. And your overall performance depends on how well you do on all the words, not how you do on the single worst one. (I agree with others that there should also be a no-timer mode for those who just don't want to feel tested and/or stressed in that way.)
- beaker52 3mo agoThis game helped me realise I'm a doofus 10/10
- pekim 3mo agohttps://wordnerd.co/23words/ https://wordnerd.co/23words/ is similar (but 23 words instead of 18). Possibly the biggest difference is that 23 Words continues with the next word if you fail to get a word within 30 seconds. When you have attempted all 23 words it will present you with results like this. You found 21/23 words Top 7% of players today.
- therealdrag0 3mo agoI like that better
- nchmy 3mo agoAs do i
- globular-toast 3mo agoWas also posted to hn a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40634042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40634042 I'm pretty sure it didn't used to continue after getting one wrong. I played it and the other word nerd games every day for a few months, but eventually they get repetitive, which I suppose any generated game will.
- pekim 3mo ago> I'm pretty sure it didn't used to continue after getting one wrong. You're right, it changed a few months ago. I find it more enjoyable now that you can continue to the end.
- tobadzistsini 3mo agoUsing an android phone with Firefox and when I hit word #13 with 7 letters, I was unable to scroll to the right to see a hidden letter. I switched to landscape and the bottom three letters were not available not was I able to scroll down to tap them.
- seabass 3mo agoIt’d be fun to get to try all the words. Maybe finishing the whole game as fast as possible could be the goal, rather than hitting 30s per word?
- lisper 3mo agoYou should take a look at this: https://www.uptoplay.net/wordiest-online-game/com.concreterose.wordiest https://www.uptoplay.net/wordiest-online-game/com.concretero... Very similar in spirit, but IMHO a lot more enjoyable than your version. It's untimed which takes the pressure off, but still a challenge because there are multiple potentially correct answers. The on-line version doesn't seem to be working, and I don't have an android device so I can't tell if the app is still working either. But I ran this on my nexus 7 for years until it died. It was one of my favorite on-line games. I would happily pay someone to port it to ios.
- ninjahawk1 3mo agoI beat it! This is the first of your challenges I’ve actually completed. It’s coming along nicely btw, some people are saying they don’t like the timer but I personally think the timer adds a lot to it. Also only being able to attempt once makes it more competitive, like if you combined hardcore minecraft and wordle. Hardcore wordle.
- abcd_f 3mo ago"Baith" ? That's a pretty niche word I'd say.
- pompomsheep 3mo agoThis was habit but baith was accepted as well
- xpct 3mo agoWow I suck! Played today's and a few others, and got ~4-6/18. I like the timer. For 4 letters it's enough time to guess, but I have no idea what they mean: 'Doby', 'Etas'
- tefkah 3mo agoholy shit this is hard
- V__ 3mo agoI don't mind the timer as much, but I also like some of the suggested improvements here. The only thing I really don't like, is that each puzzle can only be played once. I would like to figure out all words of a day even if it doesn't count. This could even be an interesting statistic, how many people finished all words ignoring the time component.
- runjake 3mo ago[flagged]
- volkk 3mo agoi've literally never heard of this, but great to pollute my brain with more of this bs. serious question: if the majority aren't "in the know" and some minority is, and the game has literally nothing to do with sending any sekrut messages, who cares? like, is a white nationalist sitting here on HN, playing this game over a coffee and thinks, "heh, sick this is 4 numbers away from the callsign"
- johndough 3mo agoIf an uneducated acquaintance of yours was about to name their newborn child "Adolf", would you interject that this name might not be such a great idea?
- volkk 3mo agothere's a big difference between Adolf and whatever esoteric garbage this is
- pohl 3mo agoNot sure where you’re from but it’s not esoteric at all. Here in the US our current administration is constantly vice-signaling to white supremacists to maintain them as a political base, and uses myriad similar winks to do it. One example: in 2020 the Trump campaign ran Facebook ads featuring an inverted red triangle. The opening sentence was 14 words long. They ran the ad 88 times. It’s ok to choose to be ignorant of the implications, but it’s better to maintain situational awareness. (I’m not saying the game needs to change its name.)
- runjake 3mo agoThis "esoteric" garbage is the catchphrase of white nationalists globally. So it's about as esoteric as white nationalism is. For example, members of the current US administration know it/believe it.
- p2detar 3mo agoLove the sleek UI. Forgive the shameless plug. Here is my word game which only features words from programming and compsci. https://7coderwords.kenamick.com https://7coderwords.kenamick.com
- temporallobe 3mo agoI would suggest instead of a countdown timer, use time as a score (less time used = higher score) so at least the player can advance. Also it’s no fun and extremely annoying to make the player wait 12 hours for the next challenge, which turns me off to even wanting to play again.
- nonethewiser 3mo agoIf you do that you could not even show the timer. Or make it more discrete or toggle its presence. For the person who wants to optimize (although tbh its not really even actionable), but otherwise remove it since its stressing people out
- spaceman_2020 3mo agoDamn fun and challenging Congrats! This looks like a daily one for me
- TimTheTinker 3mo agoSome kinds of brains must just not be good at this kind of game. I used to win spelling bees in school, but I played the entire archive on this game and my highest score was 6/18. Maybe it has to do with the balance between audio and visual learning. Spelling bees are spoken words in, letters out -- not letters in, words out. When trying to solve these, I kept trying to sound out different orderings of letters, maybe that's not how good players do it?
- hombre_fatal 3mo agoI think I get anchored too easily based on what my brain sees in the scrambled letters. A re-scramble button would do wonders for me like in that Spelling Bee game on NYTimes.
- Retr0id 3mo agoI failed on the last one, I wish I could've gone into "extra time" to keep guessing even if it didn't contribute to my score.
- mudil 3mo agoI played three games, and every time the third word for me was difficult. I bet I am not alone. Not sure it's a game I want to return to just for two first words.
- jhalloran 3mo agowow, addictive
- qocialApp 3mo agoBUG: I guessed "LATER", but it said - wrong and mentioned "ALERT". The only fix I would make is to ensure that all possible words with scrambled characters make sense. LATER and ALERT are both correct, for text "A E R T L"
- carljungslabtek 3mo agoOne of my winning words was “BAITH” which google tells me is scottish haha. Is this intentional OP? Oh it was supposed to be Habit…
- mock-possum 3mo agoYeah I got Baith too, I have no idea what that is, I just guessed it because, you know, it looks like it’d fit as a rare English word.
- maerF0x0 3mo agoThis is so much more fun than those dumb word games on linkedin
- rizsyed1 3mo agoThis is a lot of fun lol. Well done!
- nonethewiser 3mo agoWhats a good strategy for when you just don’t see it? Trying to think of a way to make incremental progress.
- ronyeh 3mo agoDon’t reset to 30s for each word. Just add 30s (or 20s). So if I am fast in the early rounds, I am rewarded in later rounds by having 1:43 to work on a word I am completely stuck on.
- mmanfrin 3mo ago3rd word it asked of me was 'BAITH' which is crazy business.
- spogbiper 3mo agoHABIT worked for me
- willtemperley 3mo agoCool. I wish I could choose British English as an option though, I failed to get words like Humor or Color because they’re just not in my lexiy.
- realty_geek 3mo agoInteresting to see how much more popular creating games has become as AI has become more powerful. Right now I am working on a house price guessing game and I know I would not have be able to get anywhere with it a couple of years ago. It has still taken me a few weeks to get it where I wanted but I have had to intervene a lot with things the AI just wasn't good at.
- linhns 3mo agoShuffle button needed.
- mailship 3mo agoMan, got something interesting and FUN on HN after a long time, LOVED IT
- blt 3mo agoUI does not register quick taps on iphone 15p duckduckgo browser
- unbalancedevh 3mo agoThis is like the on-line game Text Twist.
- pjz 3mo agoI'd appreciate a 'shuffle' button that just re-mixed-up the letters into a different order. I find this keeps me from obsessing on adjacent letter pairs that my eyes/brain lock onto.
- woodpanel 3mo agoNon-native speaker here: really really hard, never make it past 13/18
- alucardo 3mo agosame here, 13/18 is my best so far. Nice challenge tough :)
- akkad33 3mo agoGreat game.
- LordOmlette 3mo agoBeautifully done! Simple, elegant, and how in the unholy hell do I not know how to spell "photo"?? I anticipate the NY Times will buy you out and I am very jealous
- rzzzt 3mo agoI guessed HOPTO and PHOOT but none of them worked unfortunately
- system2 3mo agoIt should be point based and go to the next word instead of killing the game.
- murphyslab 3mo agoSuggestion: Require a user to hit ENTER or SPACE to clear the word, even if it's a wrong word. Being able to see the letters laid linearly is useful to solving. Automated clearing of wrong words is unhelpful.
- Calazon 3mo ago[dead]
- w10-1 3mo agoLoved it. I would change the timer from text (which I'm constantly reading as it changes) to a progress bar or set of dots which don't require thinking. Also I would use 3 strikes instead of one you're out, because a single miss isn't really representative. (similarly, any valid word should work.) Letter display order can offer clues but seems random. Perhaps vowels on top row, then consonants on bottom, in alphabetic order? Would love a hard mode for multi-lingual (latin-text) speakers to use multiple languages.
- fisher-brett 3mo agoVery fun and I loved the UI. Just wish I could have played the rest of the words ("photo" got me out)
- maxverse 3mo agoSame
- jzer0cool 3mo agoM-E-T-I-R
- C4sual 3mo ago5/18
- neogodless 3mo agoBut how do I learn the word I missed?!
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- h2aichat 3mo agoIt is harder when english is not your first language. It's fun!
- cschep 3mo agokeyboard input please!
- mclanett 3mo agoSurprisingly fun!
- yayamao 3mo agohard and addictive
- redbell 3mo agoLovely game indeed! Spoiler alert ahead: unethical way to win that needs to be fixed. Play in incognito mode and when you lose, you already know the word(s). Restart the browser and you are ready to play again, instantly.
- minikomi 3mo agoI think it might be fun if the words told a story
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- hrdwdmrbl 3mo agoAnswer key in case anyone is curious: https://gist.github.com/hrdwdmrbl/0588c581f7fcc0e448fc063c4ed34644 https://gist.github.com/hrdwdmrbl/0588c581f7fcc0e448fc063c4e...
- hrdwdmrbl 3mo agoI had to know what the answer "corner" turned out to be
- varun_ch 3mo agofunction getPercentileText(survived) { if (survived === 18) return 'Top 1% of players today '; if (survived === 17) return 'Top 2% of players today '; if (survived === 16) return 'Top 3% of players today '; if (survived === 15) return 'Top 5% of players today '; if (survived >= 12 && survived <= 14) return 'Top 10% of players today '; if (survived >= 10 && survived <= 11) return 'Top 20% of players today '; if (survived >= 8 && survived <= 9) return 'Top 50% of players today '; return 'No trophy earned today '; } I feel like I've been lied to!
- telecuda 3mo agoJust my opinion — don’t change anything. I got to 9 words, had fun, will try again tomorrow. Simplicity and urgency win
- Omnipresent 3mo agoMind sharing some metrics (time it took you ...tokens etc) and the approach you took? Did you break it up by module? Share some prompts?
- rfool 3mo agoNice! I think a big part of the success-to-fail-ratio is Subitizing. Interestingly, whenever I failed, the correct answer felt totally obvious - and I wonder how this observation relates to frame semantics theory? And not being native english speaker (as you, reading my comment, may have noticed) makes this harder, but still an exciting game.
- comradesmith 3mo ago(We didn’t)
- montag 3mo agoWhat is subitizing?
- rfool 3mo agoYou now good old google, still, right? Anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing
- nathandaly 3mo agoEnjoyed this! I would love to be able to go back and review the words after completing the puzzle. I got one with exactly 1 second left, and wanted to tell my partner, but I can't remember which word it was now.
- geoffbp 3mo agoNice game :)
- MarchApril 3mo agoI am getting consistently gobsmacked by the 5-letter entries.
- steve_adams_86 3mo agoFascinating, I am remarkably bad at this and consistently fail at the 8th word. This might be limitation caused by whatever ADHD does to me; in particular, holding the sets of letters in my memory as I try to compose words in my mind. It's a struggle. Super fun, though. I should probably practice this.
- robrain 3mo agoRelaxed mode please. Also “HEARDS” - in what language is that an acceptable word?
- green_wheel 3mo agoOther stats you could show: - average time to correct answer - correct percentage I think you should leave it hard like this. Make people earn that perfect score. Maybe add a dedicated clear button. Others have mentioned shuffle but I think you should leave as is, it's more challenging. Awesome stuff I'm going to send this to my mom she will be addicted.
- pards 3mo ago> Maybe add a dedicated clear button. It's tedious to have to hit DEL 6 or 7 times towards the end of the game. Maybe ESC could clear the whole word?
- kownse 3mo agoReally enjoyed playing this! It's such a compact and fun little game. It might be quite a challenge for non-native English speakers, but that's all part of the fun.
- xeyownt 3mo agoLove it!
- wuhhh 3mo agoI’ve been playing Zanagrams every day, love it and love this new one too, keep em coming!
- naaqq 3mo agojust got 2/18, not a native english speaker, hard for me.
- pompomsheep 3mo agoUpdate: The game amazingly had 132,411 players yesterday and received tons of player feedback. After a long night talking with players and play testing I’ve shipped the following changes: . 1. I’ve kept the 30 second timer but you now continue through the whole 18 words to get a final score of x/18. 2. I’ve added a new share feature to better show your result in a similar Wordle style. . Thanks again for all the feedback and for checking out the game!
- japhyr 3mo agoI didn't see this until this morning, and the continuing through for the whole 18 words was a really good experience. I got 14/18, and that was much more satisfying than ending at my first failure.
- Cheetah26 3mo agoJust want to say that I love the update! I didn't read the comments after trying it out yesterday so I was surprised by the change, but it definitely feels better to keep going.
- luplex 3mo agovery fun to feel how a word with many repeatead letters is really much easier to spot, because the necessary search algorithm is just that much faster!
- davidpapermill 3mo agoLove this, thank you. Are you building the mobile app? If you don't, others will. This is classic NYT puzzle territory.
- AndyGriff 3mo agoLove this game. Addictive and challenging even for a native English speaker.
- pipe2devnull 3mo agoGreat game! I love the timer, I’m just absolutely abysmal at scrabbled letter games
- Z4cki 3mo agoThis is super cool game!
- timonoko 3mo agoKnow 6 languages and you will never get anything right. Search space too large.
- katemaster009 3mo agosometimes the simplest ones are the best
- altern8 3mo agoLove the timer, that's the killer feature. I would add a leaderboard, and then from the second word on, as you keep guessing something like "better than 10% of users", to keep me motivated. I also wonder if you add different languages, for me it wasn't that easy in English.
- EdgeExplorer 3mo agoAgree. I wouldn't change a thing. There are so, so many unscrambling words games. If someone just wants to casually unscramble words, they can find something more to their taste. As implemented: There is a clear "game over". You did as well as you could; try again tomorrow. That's great. The length/difficulty gets harder as you go on, so getting to 18 is a true challenge. Also great. The letters are in the order they are in, no reshuffling. This is also great. You can't just spam reshuffle until you see it; you have to make do with what you got.
- potato-peeler 3mo agoI expected the game to restart when I lost the word, but when it continued it piqued my interest to continue playing. It can get bit tedious as one progresses, you need to push yourself to continue. Not sure what can be done to motivate yourself to continue. But I did enjoy since it didn’t make me restart if I lose a round.
- npodbielski 3mo agoReally hard game for someone that is non native. Or maybe I am just at scrabbles?
- marshblocker 3mo agoHey man, I like the new update. I think the game is more enjoyable!
- totallygeeky 3mo agoThis is a really fun project! Makes me feel a bit dumb, but I think that's what good puzzles do! Going to keep checking in on this.
- 21-DOT-DEV 3mo agoBeen really enjoying this game, great stuff! I think it would be helpful if there was a button that shuffles the character placement around. I feel like a word’s arrangement noticeably changes its difficulty.
- nmenon10 3mo agoGot to 13 before blanking on what turned out to be a pretty obvious word. Personally, I think the timer mechanic that would work best here might be a running bank rather than a per-word reset. Start with X seconds, and when you solve a word add back N seconds scaled to word length. Fast solves on easy words give you buffer for the hard ones. Keeps the pressure without the "lose a potential perfect score on one brain-freeze" frustration.
- nmenon10 3mo ago[dead]
- alucardo 3mo agoNon-native english speaker here. Any plan adding other languages? I have fun training my vocabulary, but my kids would love a french version :) Robust UI/UX and well balanced gameplay, thank you!
- pompomsheep 3mo agoSomebody made a french version here you can check out - https://18mots.com https://18mots.com
- sanreds 3mo agoThis is such a refresher for the day. Loved playing this.
- ohadkr 3mo ago[flagged]
- pobonin 3mo agoVery cool game, well done! Any plan to have multilingual support? Would love a French version.
- thatmaltesedev 3mo agoliterally got stuck playing this game for the past 20 mins instead of actually posting my project ahaha good one!
- lohith1710 3mo agoFun idea overall. I wouldn't remove the timer because it gives the game its own identity.
- aaravnarula 3mo agothis was fun 18 words challenge #28 I scored 15/18 words Top 5% of players today https://18words.com https://18words.com
- Superbowl5889 3mo agoThat's very neat ! words are simple but challanging
- coderatlarge 3mo agohow is “yemen” not a word??
- thomasjackson29 3mo agoVery cool game - the timer put the pressure on quick! Have you thought about about enabling the ability to slide between letters like how you can on a mobile keyboard? This would make it a lot quicker and intuitive from my perspective
- jschveibinz 3mo agoIn Safari, refreshing the page will reorder the letters. I discovered this by accident.
- Jahnavi_Aleti 3mo agolove the game, the timer adds the stress, I also think that you could add a multi-player option, so we can play with our friends:)
- ilovebrasil 3mo agoHi Pompomsheep! I just wanted to say—you’ve made a seriously addictive game! Congrats! I was wondering if you’d be interested in bringing it to CrazyGames (www.crazygames.com). We’d love to help you reach a bigger audience and monetize your awesome game. If that sounds interesting, feel free to send me an email at nahee@crazygames.com. I’d love to chat! Looking forward to hearing from you!
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- nwarner0 3mo agoI thought it was excellent. I was happy with the timer but found that I could either get a word almost immediately or not at all. Would it be possible to 'skip' ones you get stuck on? Then they are given back to you at the end or you can click on the squares to finish them (different colour for skipped) at any point? How about a letter shuffle feature? Game itself was very slick. I got 13 btw...
- Sef77200 3mo agoI would like a reset button for when I see I’m going wrong after a few letters. The timer could continue to countdown but it would be faster to click reset rather than unclicking each letter