Show HN: My saturday project. For when your co-founders can't 'Draw Something'.

http://www.omghalp.com/

by sgk284 • 14 years ago

54 48 14 years ago

sgk28415• 14 years ago

This is just a quick project I threw together this Saturday. It simply finds all possible words that meet the criteria you specify and ranks them according to their English frequency.

Gigablah• 14 years ago

I'm surprised that domain name was available :)

chime• 14 years ago

Which wordlist/dictionary are you using? I use WordNet for my word finding app: http://chir.ag/projects/tip-of-my-tongue/

FYI, the search is broken right now, probably due to HN traffic. I get the error: Internal Server Error.

mopatches2• 14 years ago

Cool - where are you sourcing the candidate words?

sgk28415• 14 years ago

I used the frequency lists from Wikitionary for searching an ranking. They've got the 40,000 most frequent words.

mgevans• 14 years ago

The client downloads the current word list from this URL: http://static.iminlikewithyou.com/drawsomething/wordlist.csv

I've been meaning to see if I can run a proxy and substitute my own words.

EDIT: I personally use wordplay (http://hsvmovies.com/static_subpages/personal_orig/wordplay/...) with the -lx flags on this file when I'm stumped

madzito• 14 years ago

nice.. so you put a limit on the number of letters, and shuffle the letters in all possible combinations searching your wictionary. Interesting.

sgk28415• 14 years ago

Thanks :) I also order the results based on frequency and I just pushed an update to the site that uses the official word list of "Draw Something".

gautaml2• 14 years ago

500 Server error.

That went well.

F_J_H• 14 years ago

There's no need for that. Why do you feel you need to be sarcastic and rude?

gautaml2• 14 years ago

I'm sorry everyone can't be nice on the internets.

zalew• 14 years ago

http://www.omghalp.com/?length=6&char=b&char=a&c...

indeed

roryokane2• 14 years ago

Yes, it turns out that the game gives you a selection of letters, like Scrabble, to fill in all the text fields shown. You get the 500 error if you leave the text fields blank. It would be nice if the site gave a JavaScript alert instead of submitting the form with invalid input.

sgk28415• 14 years ago

Unfortunately, that was a bug. If the number of characters you provided was less than the length of the word you gave, the server 500'd.

Oops! Sorry about that, the link should be fixed now!

roryokane2• 14 years ago

It would be nice if you made the text "Draw Something" in the subtitle link to the app. I didn't know what Draw Something was, but clicked the link anyway, assuming I could figure it out by analogy to hangman and Pictionary by looking at your site's interface. I couldn't; I had to look it up.

Possible link destinations:

http://omgpop.com/drawsomething

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/draw-something-free/id4886282...

sgk28415• 14 years ago

Thanks for the suggestion! Just deployed a new version that links to their page.

naush2• 14 years ago

Funny, I wrote a script for my girlfriend a week ago too. I just grabbed my word list from /usr/share/dict/words though.

https://gist.github.com/2069501

naush2• 14 years ago

Update: use the official word list from DrawSomething...

taofu• 14 years ago

Why "co-founders"? Surely you mean co-players

sgk28415• 14 years ago

Heh, it was a jab at my co-founders.

kirillzubovsky• 14 years ago

Steve, "Scoutzie" is not a word! ugh :) It's good to see you guys are still having fun!

sgk28415• 14 years ago

Haha, thanks Kirill :) Everyday you gotta have fun!

snguyen• 14 years ago

I've actually been using this for awhile: http://www.justin.my/draw-something-words/

hellokhoaphan• 14 years ago

Real awesome tool, great job Steve.

On a side note though, anyone who seriously uses this tool to play 'Draw Something' is missing out on the concept of the game, which is to use your creativity to draw up something that users can then guess.

If you're using a tool to help you guess a word the correct word, then you're doing the "drawer" a disservice by basically saying to them that their drawing is good enough, when it really isn't... seeing as you couldn't guess what it was.

It's like funding a start up that you know is destined to fail and you keep telling them to keep on keeping on with the doomed idea; or in this case, their crappy drawings that you can't guess!

wizzard2• 14 years ago

While I agree with you in spirit, I just want to point out that it's not always the drawer's fault that you don't recognize a pop culture reference ("katniss") or something a bit obscure ("golem").

Also, you might have too much riding on the game if you can use startup funding as an analogy!

tylermenezes• 14 years ago

I think you're sort of missing the point of the game, which is to be a game. If you're cheating anyone, it's yourself. Cheating (unless you're developing the cheat yourself) is almost never fun for more than 3 minutes.

shinji97• 14 years ago

you should consider allowing users to input all the letters into one single input box, might just a little bit less effort for the users =)

jurre4• 14 years ago

You can just keep typing while you're in the first text box :)

sgk28415• 14 years ago

I'm glad you noticed that! I added it as a convenience for myself when testing it... and wasn't sure if anyone else would discover it :)

keithpeter• 14 years ago

I tried the word 'parallelogram'. The web page keeps changing 13 letters to 12 letters in the number of letters box then saying it can't find a word.

I've never heard of 'draw something' as a game before so perhaps I'm using a word that isn't allowed or something.

Stuff like this is handy in teaching especially if it works on a mobile phone (blackberry for teenagers, iPhone for colleagues :-)

sgk28415• 14 years ago

Hey, thanks for the feedback. You can only specify 12 letters, so it doesn't make sense to search for a 13 letter word.

Re: teaching, I'll clean up the code a bit and put it up on github. There isn't anything too novel in there though.

sgk28415• 14 years ago

Here ya go: https://github.com/stevekrenzel/omghalp

mayanksinghal• 14 years ago

Is this is an acceptable convention in US: http://omgpop.com/drawsomething says that the app is available at .99 cents (Get it now: .99 cents)?

cdawzrd• 14 years ago

Related: Verizon Math http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/

superchink• 14 years ago

No, that's definitely wrong. It's a common error, though, and in a lot of cases people don't even notice (especially when it's clear that it doesn't sell for part of a cent).

tobiasbischoff• 14 years ago

took the best methods from this comments here and put the in an ios app: CheatSomething! is free in the AppStore: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwa...

Show HN: My saturday project. For when your co-founders can't 'Draw Something'.

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