Just a vote since I'm seeing a lot of anti-timer sentiment: I like the timer because it creates a conclusive way for the game to end, and causes me to spend a lot less time on the game, I imagine. But I also think it makes sense to have a non-timer mode. It would also be cool to have like 3 shuffles that you are allowed to use. As an exit to the non-timer mode, I think it would be fine to have an "I give up " button.
I also love the countdown. Counterintuitively it makes the game less stressful — the counter goes back to 30 no matter what. If the timer counted up, you'd constantly need to care about getting each one as fast as possible, or fret about one that's taking you minutes, etc.
With the countdown, you more want to care about the high level stuff: Keep your brain agile enough to get the next one, figure out more general patterns, ensure you "cover" the promising patterns, notice tough spots (with tons of patterns) where you you'll need to lock in. That stuff is more fun to focus on than speed.
Everyone wants to fail less, sure. It's not surprising people's feedback focuses on the mechanic that made you fail! That doesn't mean changing that bit will make the game more fun.
A problem with timers in word games is players vary A LOT, like a lot a lot, -- no, more than you're thinking now, even after I said that -- in terms of how fast they are at word games.
So a timer needs to either accept that a lot of interested parties will be turned off by it - or must be designed in a more accommodating way.
This is not a game for me - I don’t enjoy scrambled letter games in the first place, and I don’t really respond to time pressure in games. That said, I don’t think you should change it. It’s conceptually clear as it is, and adding a forgiving mode would just make it wishy washy. The simplicity is appealing and it doesn’t have to be for everyone!
Complete 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.
I 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.
If 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.
I'd prefer a mode where you fail the word, but can continue to the next word.
Perhaps it is intentionally part of the design, but being a bit of a perfectionist, I failed a couple of times, and found that actually the longer words were (often) easier than the shorter ones...
I'm totally fine with the way it works, because, well, it's a game, losing should be losing. I mean, I kinda want to continue, but I'm glad I'm not allowed to. I didn't make it. There will be another chance tomorrow.
But I'd like to propose allowing keyboard input. Losing because of your mouse skills in a pattern recognition game is annoying.
I like the timed version, but would like to be able to just miss the word and get moved to the next one with a final score out of 18.
I also like some of the comments about the non-timed version to just chill and play without stress. Having a back catalog of timer-less puzzles would be a fun way to use my brain and kill some time.
I'm timer-ambivalent--at the very least, I'd like to be able to continue through the sequence after getting stumped on one.
Maybe distinguish perfect/timely runs with the "trophy" you mention, or a "rank" from a scale (Bracket City's [0] "offices in a hypothetical city government" scale is cute). Or even a simple daily score. But I prefer to complete the daily puzzle even if I don't do it perfectly—and I find that "streak" oddly motivating despite myself. I dunno: "completed" and "completed perfectly" are two different flavors of reinforcement, both motivating.
As it is now, it feels like the game is punishing me for getting stuck on a single early puzzle, by withholding the other X puzzles in the set. And I feel like a consequence is that the game doesn't have a fixed "serving size" in my mind: it's either a 30-second single-clue game, or a 9-minute 18-clue game, and I don't know going in whether I'm getting the single cracker or the full afternoon tea today. I have to make 9 minutes of potential time for it, but I might only get 30 seconds of fun if I screw up.
As to your question 1), I'd like to see two things:
* A "shuffle" button. Often rearranging the letters helps me see it. I feel like I should be able to hit shuffle as much as I want with no cost in terms of the game mechanic--kind of analogous to playing with my (physical) Scrabble tiles.
* As far as a more helpful/"costly" chickening-out for when you're stumped and ready to give up... With Bracket City fresh on my mind, I like their approach with a single, progressive "help" mechanic. Hit it once, you get the first letter; hit it again, you reveal the full word and move right on (at some cost to your score, but blunting the disappointment by immediately giving you the fresh energy of the next clue).
a) the timer would be cumulative, so that solving the early words faster gives more time for the harder words,
b) going negative wouldn't end the game, it would just turn the time red or something, with the goal being to finish all of the words with the highest time-remaining possible, rather than just to win/lose.
The timer seems essential to the gameplay. If I can’t get the word in thirty seconds, I lose. That’s how word games with hourglasses worked in board boxes for years. The scoring system is fine. This is a tightly designed game and it would be less enjoyable if it catered to any other needs than went into its design.
I really like everyone's idea of finding some way of letting the player play all 18 words. Either count up time, and use total time as the score (while allowing pausing). Or else just count the total score at the end, and if someone fails a word it's reduced from the score. So you got 16/18 word or something.
As someone who definitely gets worked up when there’s a timer (still got all 18; top 1% really? Might be good to show a rough number of total players), I don’t really get it without a timer.
I am with the people asking for a scramble/ shuffle button. I have to do anagrams all the time in cryptic crosswords and sometimes it requires seeing things in a totally different order to unlock the answer.
1. Yes, hints, like maybe the position of a random letter, then another, etc. The game could allow you to "buy" more letters with your existing score (and maybe an initial amount: everyone starts at, say, 36?)
2. Yes being able to continue would be great, it's frustrating that the game just stops.
Oftentimes feedback is useful to address a complaint. “Lots of people are frustrated with X” is great signal. The solution might not be (but certainly sometimes is) the fixes they recommend; but the pain they’re expressing is real.
Yeah, I'd like some kind of reward for having done the previous words in 4s each. Just when I get to a hard one (for me) it can take a really long time to spot it.
Also, maybe having a button (and also a key press) to randomly rearrange the letters, or allow me to drag them around to try to figure it out... like I'd do with scrabble tiles on my rack.
The timer is OK, IMHO, but longer words should give you more time to guess. Makes little sense to give people 30 seconds to guess both a four-letter and a seven-letter word.
That would also let you scale to any arbitrary word length.
I immediately liked the game and was inspired to try multiple days,
my single biggest frustration was that once a day is attempted, it's locked, and, you can't continue after a single failure.
The "single point of failure" having heavy consequences would likely make me bounce off and not return.
Might I suggest an alternate design to try:
Keep the incentive to speed, but reduce the punishment.
Proposal:
Score is points-per-word as a function of time to complete.
With a non-linear asymptomic point curve.
Bonus for very fast, long tail decreasing from 1.x points to 0.x, after 30s you get 0 points...
...but critically you are not loocked out of the game and can take as long as you like.
Bonus for caching this state so you can return later
There are variations, e.g. a total time budget for all words... perhaps you retain a sense of tier, with players able to select a "league" which gives higher reward for fastest responses but more quickly drops you to zero for the rest of the game...
You can still have a leader board (implicit or explicit) where points are fungible.
You could even then have a "no stress" league which gives a flat 0.25 points per success with no timer at all or something.
The 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.
I think Zach Gage (developer of excellent games including Really Bad Chess, Spelltower, etc) says on Adam Conover's podcast that for many people they have difficulty improving at a skill when they have time (or other) pressure
Thus, he always includes a relaxed mode to let someone practice without any stress. Incidentally, he realized that some people only ever play in the relaxed mode!
Maybe if it counted up I would be less annoyed by it. I like how the NYT does it with their crossword app. If you complete it under some threshold you get a gold star but there's no upper limit on the time.
The Zanagrams game, which AFACK is from the same developer (?), actually does this - it counts up like a stopwatch, then compares your time to the global average at the end.
Having a timer is maybe not so much the problem, but there's no reward here for doing early words quickly and no appreciation for the fact that difficulty is not linear. Would be nice if you could bank up some time for when harder ones come.
I agree. The combination of one game per day, and a timer is not a great combo. Having a total time at the end would be a great way for people who want to compete on time, and for anyone else who actually wants to finish they can do that too.
I’m a counselor at a day camp this summer, and we have Smart Boards in our rooms. I do some of the NYT games with the kids each morning (and then usually the smart board is off for the rest of the day).
I completely agree. If this didn’t have the timer (or maybe if it were counting up in the corner) it could be a great addition to our collection of games.
I'd probably say there instead of a Challenge Mode and a Relax Mode like you said, it could just be a combined mode where there is a timer but after it goes out it simply continues the game on Relax Mode.
Or alternatively every word still has the timer and then at the end if you finish, it tells you how many words you completed under the timer and gives you a score based on that.
And then maybe an option for those who don't want the timer to show at all, since maybe it adds a bit of pressure. You can have just a simple option that removes the timer entirely from view
Another idea: maybe time how long you take for each word, and for the competitive among us, show stats on how long you took compared to everyone else, and a leaderboard for who took the least total time.
In one sense I really enjoy the timer up to the point that I lose, but it feels very unsatisfactory, especially if I lose early, & I'm acutely aware the difficulty level it's set at will be experienced radically differently by different players (to the exclusion of most I would imagine).
Having a timerless mode is very much needed as an option - there's no real risk of "cheating" with these cookie-based browser games anyway since I could just have infinite retries in a private tab if I felt like doing that.
Yea, the timer is a little stressful though I understand the purpose/design behind it. I do like the suggestion of the no timer or a relaxed mode with.
PS anyone have any other fun, simple games like this and Zanagrams? I found https://maptap.gg/ recently and that also gives me the same Classic Web feeling that OP mentioned.
All games should have the option to have the timer turned off.
I regularly do cryptic crosswords (so this sort of game is in my wheelhouse). My goal is to complete the puzzle, not do so in a particular time. Completing it is often hard (depending on which paper I've picked up). There is no timer when I'm say with paper and pen, so it baffles me that every online newspaper cryptic has a timer on by default, and in some cases it can't be disabled.
It's also the thing that "ruined" the LinkedIn puzzles for me. They're generally fun puzzles, but timing it against my PB or - worse - people I'm connected to on LinkedIn just wrecks the experience. I opted out of leaderboards, because I don't really want to know a guy I worked with years ago trashes me at Queens every morning.
Strong agreement that a "relax" mode is needed here - at longer word lengths its becoming a test of recall and anagram ability, and that's fun in its own right. The timer just makes it a bit "meh", and I won't be returning as a result. Shame.
This reminds me of how my wife absolutely thrives on gamification and the social competition of things like Peloton, while they destroy 100% of my interest in the thing. We’re both intensely competitive people but in completely different ways.
Yeah 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
I 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:
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"
I'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.
I 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.
This 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.
On 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'.
I 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.
I 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.
If 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
Don’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.
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.
Did 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
I 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
Clear your cookies for the site or open incognito mode. But I agree there's no reason not to let people continue and just mark where they ended "legitimately".
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).
Loved 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.
Hardly dangerous. The same disclaimer put on the Anti-Defamation League website applies here:
> All the symbols depicted here must be evaluated in the context in which they appear. Few symbols represent just one idea or are used exclusively by one group. For example, 100% is often used as an amount or an expression and it is also used by some by some white supremacists as shorthand for "100% white."
i'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"
If 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?
I 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/ (which was also posted here recently).
This 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.
Suggestion: 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.
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.
Interesting 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.
Some 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?
This 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?
I 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.
I 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.
Using 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.
I 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).
One 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'.
Some 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.)
Please 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.
I 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.
I 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.
Thanks 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?
Just a vote since I'm seeing a lot of anti-timer sentiment: I like the timer because it creates a conclusive way for the game to end, and causes me to spend a lot less time on the game, I imagine. But I also think it makes sense to have a non-timer mode. It would also be cool to have like 3 shuffles that you are allowed to use. As an exit to the non-timer mode, I think it would be fine to have an "I give up " button.
I also love the countdown. Counterintuitively it makes the game less stressful — the counter goes back to 30 no matter what. If the timer counted up, you'd constantly need to care about getting each one as fast as possible, or fret about one that's taking you minutes, etc.
With the countdown, you more want to care about the high level stuff: Keep your brain agile enough to get the next one, figure out more general patterns, ensure you "cover" the promising patterns, notice tough spots (with tons of patterns) where you you'll need to lock in. That stuff is more fun to focus on than speed.
Everyone wants to fail less, sure. It's not surprising people's feedback focuses on the mechanic that made you fail! That doesn't mean changing that bit will make the game more fun.
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A problem with timers in word games is players vary A LOT, like a lot a lot, -- no, more than you're thinking now, even after I said that -- in terms of how fast they are at word games.
So a timer needs to either accept that a lot of interested parties will be turned off by it - or must be designed in a more accommodating way.
I also like the timer. Eventually I’d like to do other things and the timer ends the games.
This is not a game for me - I don’t enjoy scrambled letter games in the first place, and I don’t really respond to time pressure in games. That said, I don’t think you should change it. It’s conceptually clear as it is, and adding a forgiving mode would just make it wishy washy. The simplicity is appealing and it doesn’t have to be for everyone!
This is a game for me. I play lots of scrambled letter games (mainly https://squaredle.app/ every day). Time pressure ruins it for me.
Complete 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.
I 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.
If 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.
I’d prefer a timer, but when it runs out of time, you just don’t get credit for the word.
You click next and it goes to the next word.
I don’t want hints but I can see how others might want that. But you still don’t get credit for hints. Or it shows “x hints used”
Final score can show that you got the first N words in <30s (as it is now), and you can have other stats:
* Total number of consecutive words (even if over time)
* Total number of words
* total words <30 seconds
* Plus whatever hint based metrics you want
I'd prefer a mode where you fail the word, but can continue to the next word.
Perhaps it is intentionally part of the design, but being a bit of a perfectionist, I failed a couple of times, and found that actually the longer words were (often) easier than the shorter ones...
I'm totally fine with the way it works, because, well, it's a game, losing should be losing. I mean, I kinda want to continue, but I'm glad I'm not allowed to. I didn't make it. There will be another chance tomorrow.
But I'd like to propose allowing keyboard input. Losing because of your mouse skills in a pattern recognition game is annoying.
Keyboard input should work!
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For me the timer makes the game. Most popular word games have no timer stress so it makes it unique, versus just "Boggle but one word at a time".
I would like the option to continue when you miss a word, but I also like the "miss a word and it's over" nature for the actual daily game.
You're not going to please everyone here. You might simply need to let the player pick a difficulty level, for example:
- Relaxed - No timer, keep going when you miss / Hurried - Timer, keep going when you miss / Rush - Timer, stops when you miss (default daily)
I think you really have something here! I love word games, and a new one that I would play daily doesn't come along often. Nice job!
1. keep the timer counting up
2. add a multiplier depending on the number of seconds until solved. [30s / [taken]s = score
3. add button to give up
I like the timed version, but would like to be able to just miss the word and get moved to the next one with a final score out of 18.
I also like some of the comments about the non-timed version to just chill and play without stress. Having a back catalog of timer-less puzzles would be a fun way to use my brain and kill some time.
I'm timer-ambivalent--at the very least, I'd like to be able to continue through the sequence after getting stumped on one.
Maybe distinguish perfect/timely runs with the "trophy" you mention, or a "rank" from a scale (Bracket City's [0] "offices in a hypothetical city government" scale is cute). Or even a simple daily score. But I prefer to complete the daily puzzle even if I don't do it perfectly—and I find that "streak" oddly motivating despite myself. I dunno: "completed" and "completed perfectly" are two different flavors of reinforcement, both motivating.
As it is now, it feels like the game is punishing me for getting stuck on a single early puzzle, by withholding the other X puzzles in the set. And I feel like a consequence is that the game doesn't have a fixed "serving size" in my mind: it's either a 30-second single-clue game, or a 9-minute 18-clue game, and I don't know going in whether I'm getting the single cracker or the full afternoon tea today. I have to make 9 minutes of potential time for it, but I might only get 30 seconds of fun if I screw up.
As to your question 1), I'd like to see two things:
* A "shuffle" button. Often rearranging the letters helps me see it. I feel like I should be able to hit shuffle as much as I want with no cost in terms of the game mechanic--kind of analogous to playing with my (physical) Scrabble tiles.
* As far as a more helpful/"costly" chickening-out for when you're stumped and ready to give up... With Bracket City fresh on my mind, I like their approach with a single, progressive "help" mechanic. Hit it once, you get the first letter; hit it again, you reveal the full word and move right on (at some cost to your score, but blunting the disappointment by immediately giving you the fresh energy of the next clue).
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43160542
I'm fine with the timer if at least the game isn't stopped after a fail.
Just reduce the final score, as someone else here also suggested, but I'd like to at least always get to try all 18 words.
Someone replied with "survival mode" which is a great way to phrase it.
Maybe a few different modes? How many can you get out of 18, how long can you last (unlimited), and just a chilled relaxed mode.
A button to jumble the letters would be nice too.
In my dream version of this:
a) the timer would be cumulative, so that solving the early words faster gives more time for the harder words,
b) going negative wouldn't end the game, it would just turn the time red or something, with the goal being to finish all of the words with the highest time-remaining possible, rather than just to win/lose.
I would like a chance to play a puzzle I failed on to just practice what comes next. I don't need rewards or anything after the initial fail.
Fun game, thanks for sharing!
Yeah, when you fail, maybe it could offer a "continue playing" option? Then you can still finish the words, but it doesn't add to your score.
Same! I did it by using private browser windows, this way I could see all the words.
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The timer seems essential to the gameplay. If I can’t get the word in thirty seconds, I lose. That’s how word games with hourglasses worked in board boxes for years. The scoring system is fine. This is a tightly designed game and it would be less enjoyable if it catered to any other needs than went into its design.
First, this is fantastic! Really fun.
I really like everyone's idea of finding some way of letting the player play all 18 words. Either count up time, and use total time as the score (while allowing pausing). Or else just count the total score at the end, and if someone fails a word it's reduced from the score. So you got 16/18 word or something.
Also, Zanagrams is really fun too!
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I don’t mind the timer, but if I “lose” on a word I’d like to keep going or trying myself.
Timer should be like in chess tournaments: an initial budget of X, increase by Y for each word you guess.
I don't think you need any non-timer version. The archive is there for people to play more.
Some suggestions people have made around being able to shuffle or place letters - maybe. But the game is pretty perfect as it is.
Nice work OP! Love this!
The timer adds more pressure and excitement.
Really simple and slick game - well done OP and congrats on the launch!
As someone who definitely gets worked up when there’s a timer (still got all 18; top 1% really? Might be good to show a rough number of total players), I don’t really get it without a timer.
I am with the people asking for a scramble/ shuffle button. I have to do anagrams all the time in cryptic crosswords and sometimes it requires seeing things in a totally different order to unlock the answer.
According to my analytics only 32 people out of 12,145 got all 18 in todays puzzle so far!
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1. You can have a button for both.
2. Yes
3. I got stuck and couldn't get past RILGUN -- it'd be nice to know what the word you were going for actually was.
>I got stuck and couldn't get past RILGUN -- it'd be nice to know what the word you were going for actually was.
i think there is only two valid words: luring and ruling.
I like the timer but just give the option - play with timer (pro), play without timer (relax). split the results as well.
1. Yes, hints, like maybe the position of a random letter, then another, etc. The game could allow you to "buy" more letters with your existing score (and maybe an initial amount: everyone starts at, say, 36?)
2. Yes being able to continue would be great, it's frustrating that the game just stops.
Great work anyway!
1. I'd prefer to reveal letters ... each press of the hint button reveals the position of one random letter.
2. I don't have a preference.
Very cool and well done.
Keep the timer, but after 30 seconds, deduct a point, after 60 seconds show an option to reveal the word / give up.
> 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?
Absolutely, I had to reopen it a bunch of times in incognito to make it to the end xD
Very fun!
I like it just the way it is. Fun!
How about a hint provided for the last 5 seconds, for 7 letter words or greater.
And at the end there is a “used a hint” badge or not.
I'd like more common words?
"Baith" is incredibly esoteric.
"Habit" is another anagram you could have used, and not esoteric.
i did "habit"
Careful taking advice from nerds over-complicating things, it's beautiful as-is. Maybe have it be 7s per letter instead of a fixed 30s.
Oftentimes feedback is useful to address a complaint. “Lots of people are frustrated with X” is great signal. The solution might not be (but certainly sometimes is) the fixes they recommend; but the pain they’re expressing is real.
I'd probably rather it just tell me the answer and give the option to continue :)
Those are all good options.
Also a version in which your unused time is accumulated for future rounds would be interesting
Yeah, I'd like some kind of reward for having done the previous words in 4s each. Just when I get to a hard one (for me) it can take a really long time to spot it.
Also, maybe having a button (and also a key press) to randomly rearrange the letters, or allow me to drag them around to try to figure it out... like I'd do with scrabble tiles on my rack.
2. Yes! Allow continue for no score after timeout
The timer is OK, IMHO, but longer words should give you more time to guess. Makes little sense to give people 30 seconds to guess both a four-letter and a seven-letter word.
That would also let you scale to any arbitrary word length.
Do something so you don't lose on time while "typing" the solution!
Adding a second for each letter you type is a crude version.
Personal take:
I immediately liked the game and was inspired to try multiple days,
my single biggest frustration was that once a day is attempted, it's locked, and, you can't continue after a single failure.
The "single point of failure" having heavy consequences would likely make me bounce off and not return.
Might I suggest an alternate design to try:
Keep the incentive to speed, but reduce the punishment.
Proposal:
Score is points-per-word as a function of time to complete.
With a non-linear asymptomic point curve.
Bonus for very fast, long tail decreasing from 1.x points to 0.x, after 30s you get 0 points...
...but critically you are not loocked out of the game and can take as long as you like.
Bonus for caching this state so you can return later
There are variations, e.g. a total time budget for all words... perhaps you retain a sense of tier, with players able to select a "league" which gives higher reward for fastest responses but more quickly drops you to zero for the rest of the game...
You can still have a leader board (implicit or explicit) where points are fungible.
You could even then have a "no stress" league which gives a flat 0.25 points per success with no timer at all or something.
[dead]
The 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.
I think Zach Gage (developer of excellent games including Really Bad Chess, Spelltower, etc) says on Adam Conover's podcast that for many people they have difficulty improving at a skill when they have time (or other) pressure
Thus, he always includes a relaxed mode to let someone practice without any stress. Incidentally, he realized that some people only ever play in the relaxed mode!
The timer kills this for me too.
Maybe if it counted up I would be less annoyed by it. I like how the NYT does it with their crossword app. If you complete it under some threshold you get a gold star but there's no upper limit on the time.
The Zanagrams game, which AFACK is from the same developer (?), actually does this - it counts up like a stopwatch, then compares your time to the global average at the end.
I much prefer this way, personally at least.
Having a timer is maybe not so much the problem, but there's no reward here for doing early words quickly and no appreciation for the fact that difficulty is not linear. Would be nice if you could bank up some time for when harder ones come.
I agree. The combination of one game per day, and a timer is not a great combo. Having a total time at the end would be a great way for people who want to compete on time, and for anyone else who actually wants to finish they can do that too.
Yep, instead of feeling like a fun puzzle the timer just adds unnecessary pressure and gets me really annoyed.
My guy that’s the whole point of the game. Otherwise it’s too easy
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I’m a counselor at a day camp this summer, and we have Smart Boards in our rooms. I do some of the NYT games with the kids each morning (and then usually the smart board is off for the rest of the day).
I completely agree. If this didn’t have the timer (or maybe if it were counting up in the corner) it could be a great addition to our collection of games.
It seems so odd to me to have a word unscrambling game and have everyone shouting for the timer to be removed.
I grew up with this: https://youtu.be/UaOLkwtG-Ak?t=12 If anything it should be more intense and have music!
I'd probably say there instead of a Challenge Mode and a Relax Mode like you said, it could just be a combined mode where there is a timer but after it goes out it simply continues the game on Relax Mode.
Or alternatively every word still has the timer and then at the end if you finish, it tells you how many words you completed under the timer and gives you a score based on that.
And then maybe an option for those who don't want the timer to show at all, since maybe it adds a bit of pressure. You can have just a simple option that removes the timer entirely from view
Another idea: maybe time how long you take for each word, and for the competitive among us, show stats on how long you took compared to everyone else, and a leaderboard for who took the least total time.
Agree on the timer.
In one sense I really enjoy the timer up to the point that I lose, but it feels very unsatisfactory, especially if I lose early, & I'm acutely aware the difficulty level it's set at will be experienced radically differently by different players (to the exclusion of most I would imagine).
Having a timerless mode is very much needed as an option - there's no real risk of "cheating" with these cookie-based browser games anyway since I could just have infinite retries in a private tab if I felt like doing that.
100% agree. Casual mode would be a winner.
Yea, the timer is a little stressful though I understand the purpose/design behind it. I do like the suggestion of the no timer or a relaxed mode with.
PS anyone have any other fun, simple games like this and Zanagrams? I found https://maptap.gg/ recently and that also gives me the same Classic Web feeling that OP mentioned.
Yeah screw the timer. I can't work under pressure like that when it comes to word games. Maybe other people will enjoy that, but not me.
I love the timer. It’s the closest game to ThruLine I’ve come across (that’s a compliment).
It’s the same reason people will instantly close a site with unwanted animations (ads).
But if this game was called “Do A Word Puzzle While Being Distracted By Animated Numbers in Your Peripheral Vision”, that would be alright.
I will try out a game with a timer, but it will never be a keeper.
Same. Stopped after two words. Gave me the same feeling as taking a timed software developer screening.
English is not my native tongue. If I had a relaxed mode, that'd be awesome :)
All games should have the option to have the timer turned off.
I regularly do cryptic crosswords (so this sort of game is in my wheelhouse). My goal is to complete the puzzle, not do so in a particular time. Completing it is often hard (depending on which paper I've picked up). There is no timer when I'm say with paper and pen, so it baffles me that every online newspaper cryptic has a timer on by default, and in some cases it can't be disabled.
It's also the thing that "ruined" the LinkedIn puzzles for me. They're generally fun puzzles, but timing it against my PB or - worse - people I'm connected to on LinkedIn just wrecks the experience. I opted out of leaderboards, because I don't really want to know a guy I worked with years ago trashes me at Queens every morning.
Strong agreement that a "relax" mode is needed here - at longer word lengths its becoming a test of recall and anagram ability, and that's fun in its own right. The timer just makes it a bit "meh", and I won't be returning as a result. Shame.
i like the timer.
BUT i'd like it if each round started with letters hidden and timer paused in case i need to step away and redirect my attention to something else.
> it would be to give me infinite time even if that meant my score came with an asterisk.
Or maybe don’t even keep score. That’s one of the features which makes be skip these daily games. Not every game needs to be a competition!
This reminds me of how my wife absolutely thrives on gamification and the social competition of things like Peloton, while they destroy 100% of my interest in the thing. We’re both intensely competitive people but in completely different ways.
I 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.
Yeah 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
Would be nice to have a ‘scramble!’ button so it makes it slightly easier when we get stuck
That 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.
I 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
Yeah, but also, is it really "18 words" if you don't get there?
BUG:
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"
One of my winning words was “BAITH” which google tells me is scottish haha. Is this intentional OP?
Oh it was supposed to be Habit…
Yeah 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.
I'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.
I 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.
This 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.
for what its worth you sound ultra fluent in english, so kudos whoever taught you english
On 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'.
I 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.
I guess HABIT was the expected one here.
Baith was right. But I feel stupid that I couldnt see Habit.
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I 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.
If 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
Don’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.
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.
I like that better
As do i
Pretty frustrating when you find a word, but it's not THE word. Pretty fun otherwise.
tbh this should accept all dictionary matches
Did 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
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I 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
A continue that let's you keep playing would be fun. Or maybe different modes (eg hard vs normal)
Clear your cookies for the site or open incognito mode. But I agree there's no reason not to let people continue and just mark where they ended "legitimately".
I 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).
Loved 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.
I feel like I've been lied to!
This name is dangerously close to "14 Words", a white nationalist creed, which carries certain connotations to Americans in the know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words
Hardly dangerous. The same disclaimer put on the Anti-Defamation League website applies here:
> All the symbols depicted here must be evaluated in the context in which they appear. Few symbols represent just one idea or are used exclusively by one group. For example, 100% is often used as an amount or an expression and it is also used by some by some white supremacists as shorthand for "100% white."
i'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"
If 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?
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What is your point with this comment?
Do you think this cute little word game is white nationalist? Do white nationalists have claim on all "(number) words" names?
I 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/ (which was also posted here recently).
My other game! Thanks for playing
Lovely 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.
This 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.
A lot of comments are suggestions and/or complaints, so I just came to say I loved it, no notes.
Fun 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
Suggestion: 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.
I think it might be fun if the words told a story
You should take a look at this:
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.
Very fun and I loved the UI. Just wish I could have played the rest of the words ("photo" got me out)
Answer key in case anyone is curious: https://gist.github.com/hrdwdmrbl/0588c581f7fcc0e448fc063c4e...
I had to know what the answer "corner" turned out to be
Interesting 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.
Some 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?
I 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.
This 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?
I didn’t realize the word “crowd“ only had one vowel until I saw it scrambled!
And I didn't realize "audio" had only one consonant!
Something about not being able to shuffle the tiles makes this hard for me.
Agreed, I'd really like a shuffle button
This game helped me realise I'm a doofus 10/10
I 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.
I 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.
Was this by chance inspired by a previous submission (now defunct) that had a similar premise?
https://wordnerd.co/
Great little game, thanks! I found I'm terrible at the vowel heavy words like audio and ideal, interesting.
Beautifully 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
I guessed HOPTO and PHOOT but none of them worked unfortunately
Using 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.
I 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).
Very 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
One 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'.
This 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.
Love the sleek UI.
Forgive the shameless plug. Here is my word game which only features words from programming and compsci.
https://7coderwords.kenamick.com
Wow 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'
Cool. 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.
This is fun! Could use a short "how it works" blurb on the landing page though :)
Thanks! I thought it was fun to throw people straight into the game without instructions but you think it too unclear?
I 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
I 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.
It’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?
Very 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.
Whats a good strategy for when you just don’t see it? Trying to think of a way to make incremental progress.
I 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
This is really fun, love the idea! I agree with the others, a chill/practice mode would be great.
Man, got something interesting and FUN on HN after a long time, LOVED IT
When I didn't know the word I just mashed the given letters on the keyboard randomly, sometimes I got lucky with it
Maybe the game should limit the number of tries per word?
Pretty cool idea. I think a calendar based UI to go through the archives would be more user friendly than what you have right now.
Yeah for sure I agree just kept it simple for now but will improve if people like it
3rd word it asked of me was 'BAITH' which is crazy business.
HABIT worked for me
I haven’t been able to post anything at all, so I don’t even know what it’s like to make a post.
Could I have the source code so I can plug in the Polish word list? It would make a great training app for Scrabble.
Yeah its just the single index.html file feel free to download it and adapt
It's unobfuscated. Right click, view source, there it is.
You could also probably one-shot your own version of this using any SOTA LLM, it's not terribly complicated (but a nice game idea!).
Just one shot in Claude if you have it or deepseek flash for free.
UI does not register quick taps on iphone 15p duckduckgo browser
But how do I learn the word I missed?!
iPhone bug: double tapping on a letter zooms in the viewport with no way to zoom back out, permanently breaking the page.
Oof yeah thanks! Fixed now
Some 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.)
It is harder when english is not your first language. It's fun!
This is so much more fun than those dumb word games on linkedin
Fun! But disappointing if you lose early. Maybe let the player continue after failing and showing a final score out of 18.
nice game to start my day. a refresh button to reorder the letter would be great.
Made it to 9 and then time ran out... I wish it showed me the word that I got stuck on! Argh!!!
It should have shown you!
Surprisingly fun!
That was really fun. Made it to 16/18. Thank you popmpomsheep.
Thanks for playing!
This is like the on-line game Text Twist.
Damn fun and challenging
Congrats! This looks like a daily one for me
one 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
what made you go with 18?
14 was taken.
I 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
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Not the parent, but I just checked and it seems that all $iwords.com are taken for i<18
It's the standard number of holes in a golf course
Nicely done. A shuffle letters button would be nice.
This could be a cool captcha challenge (without the timer).
That's not how captchas work...
Please 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.
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Fun, that's it. New addiction after daily wordle unlocked
Embarrassed of where I failed (#8). Very cool game though!
I failed on number 11, which put me in the top 20%. It's a tough game!
If it makes you feel better, I failed on #3. In my defense, I'm running on 2 hours of sleep.
hard and addictive
great game, what do you think of adding shuffle?
Shuffle button needed.
keyboard input please!
M-E-T-I-R
Nice, this is pretty fun!
It should be point based and go to the next word instead of killing the game.
Great game, well done
Great game.
Ha fun little game :)
Non-native speaker here: really really hard, never make it past 13/18
I 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.
Damn got to 13.
timer removed should be better
For some reason it made me think of this right away: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words
5/18
Fun game!
I got stuck on the word corner of all words. Ugh
LAMER is a real word and COLOR is not.
Depends on which side of the pond (or Canadian border?) you're on ;)
> COLOR is not
Huh? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/color
I 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.
wow, addictive
"Baith" ? That's a pretty niche word I'd say.
This was habit but baith was accepted as well
This is a lot of fun lol. Well done!
holy shit this is hard
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4/18
Enjoying time-based games must be some prey animal adaptation, y'all are probably vegan and have negative canthal tilt.
Skill issue
haha yes. I got 2 and it said come back in 9hours. LOL. Ain't nobody got time for that.
lol