Comment by aaroninsf

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.