Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?

https://www.whatsit.today/

by mkate • 1 year ago

513 246 1 year ago

whatsit.today

noelpotnic• 1 year ago

Whatsit Daily Challenge Completed in: 1:26

#5 (0:46) #2 (0:04) #4 (0:09) #1 (0:21) #3 (0:06)

https://www.whatsit.today/

Hackbraten• 1 year ago

Nice work, especially the minimalistic user interface. It runs fine on my low-powered smartphone, which is good.

12907835202• 1 year ago

Whatsit Daily Challenge Completed in: 2:43

#5 (1:18) #3 (0:04) #4 (0:46) #1 (0:27) #2 (0:09)

https://www.whatsit.today/

1123581321• 1 year ago

It’s fun! There is occasionally out of order input on mobile when tapping quickly.

mcintyre1994• 1 year ago

Neat! I played a few days :) the only issue I had was that I found it quite easy to tap a previously selected letter, and that’d mess me up especially if it wasn’t the last letter so far in that word. I think it’d probably be better to add a backspace button in addition to the clear one, and not deselect letters by tapping them.

upmostly• 1 year ago

This could be incredible. Kind of like Strands on NY Times but in Wordle format.

mouse_• 1 year ago

25 seconds here

i feel smug

dlgeek• 1 year ago

SPOILERS AHEAD

Today's challenge ("Sports Teams") was particularly easy because each one was plural. That made each one "unscramble a 4 letter word" instead of a 5. Might be a consideration for the future.

khazhoux• 1 year ago

Check out the big brain on Brad!!

I didn't spot this :-)

card_zero2• 1 year ago

It said LOINS is "not a valid word".

danhau• 1 year ago

LIONS

GilbertErik• 1 year ago

There's no professional sports team (the category for the day) called the 'LOINS'

card_zero2• 1 year ago

Oh. Well, I don't like sports of any kind. Except ones with robots. And stone skipping. And maybe indoor bowls if it doesn't get too intense.

gweinberg• 1 year ago

There should be.

linsomniac8• 1 year ago

A coworker and my wife and I have recently been really enjoying https://bracket.city which is a crossword-clue inspired word game with daily puzzles. It does take a little while to figure out, I'd recommend starting off asking for hints fairly often to decrease frustration, but after a couple weeks my wife and I are on a streak of 3 days of scoring 100.

mildavw• 1 year ago

Final score: 4.0 :/

But pretty creative game. Thanks for sharing!

linsomniac8• 1 year ago

That is probably around where my first score was. :-) My wife and I had a 0 a couple weeks ago.

j_bum• 1 year ago

Oh we absolutely love bracket city, +1

I’ve showed it to my friends, and it’s stuck. My brother shared it with all of his coworkers and they’re now playing too.

It’s fun watching it “spread” amongst my social group

linsomniac8• 1 year ago

You've had better luck spreading it than I have it sounds like. Everyone I've mentioned it to has said "It's too hard" and I don't think has really even given it a shot.

xnorswap• 1 year ago

Neat puzzle.

My first wrong answer was an international spelling issue. It would be nice if it accepted then silently corrected based on equivalent international spellings, but I can also understand why it doesn't, sometimes it might be more crucial to the solution.

linsomniac8• 1 year ago

There is a "mayor@" e-mail you can use to submit requests like this and the developer has been pretty responsive.

kbrackbill• 1 year ago

Thanks for the suggestion, that was really fun. One I've been really enjoying in the same vein is https://raddle.quest

linsomniac8• 1 year ago

Thanks for that, I just played todays and it is pretty fun!

tolien• 1 year ago

I'll quite often wind up solving this by a sort of parallel construction, as in rather than getting the hint I can work out what word is supposed to be there based on what's around it. Some of the clues can be really cryptic.

linsomniac8• 1 year ago

Yes, that is the real trick when you get stuck is to start constructing the clues that it will eventually become.

silisili• 1 year ago

Same. I saw a show HN on this a couple weeks ago and have been borderline addicted since.

Kiro• 1 year ago

I thought this was way too hard. I didn't figure out a single word and even failed the tutorial. Seeing everyone loving it makes me feel really stupid.

linsomniac8• 1 year ago

I do think it is something that is a bit of a learned skill. I've done around 30 of them and the earlier ones I did rather poorly on, and even within the last 15 puzzles I had one where I scored 0. But the last 3 puzzles I've scored 100 on.

It's not for everyone I'm sure, especially if you are unfamiliar with common English phrases (like "bang for the buck").

jimnotgym• 1 year ago

I find it a bit US centric, like many of these games

linsomniac8• 1 year ago

Yes, that is definitely true.

carmela219• 1 year ago

Whatsit Daily Challenge Completed in: 0:23

#1 (0:05) #2 (0:04) #3 (0:05) #4 (0:04) #5 (0:05)

https://www.whatsit.today/

soneca• 1 year ago

I think it has some potential, but I found today’s puzzle just too easy. I never play for speed, but even if I was, playing on a iPhone, it missed a lot of touches that I only noticed when I was typing a few letters ahead. So I had to come back, erase what I typed and start over. It was annoying already, but if I was playing for speed, it would be a deal breaker.

hn111• 1 year ago

Very nice! On iOS it does not seem to register fast consecutive taps correctly, if that’s fixed I would actually like to play this more often

IronRod• 1 year ago

Same on Android

iandanforth• 1 year ago

First clue of "Professional Sports Teams" and I noped right out. Sportsball is a pretty big red flag that the content presented is not for me.

mkate6• 1 year ago

there are actually other categories available. Check it out tomorrow and it won't be about sports :D

mft_• 1 year ago

Nice concept, but US-centric short/slang sports teams' names is a bit misjudged as the very first puzzle when introducing your new game to an international audience. I solved them because they're (mostly) words rather than them having meaning to me.

enlyth• 1 year ago

I wish there was a more internationally friendly version of NYT Games, they're so fun and I play them daily but a lot US cultural knowledge is required at times

angry_moose6• 1 year ago

It cuts both ways.

Cryptic Crosswords are almost impenetrable from the US as they're so deep in UK specific words, spellings, and trivia.

spicybright3• 1 year ago

Same complaint. Also, not to poke fun at us too hard but there's probably less sports fans here than the average population :)

Really like the idea though.

SirSourdough• 1 year ago

For those of you who are put off from trying the game by the category for today’s puzzle being sports, note there are other puzzles from prior days with more general topics.

Click the calendar icon at top of page for the archive.

JKCalhoun2• 1 year ago

Yep, didn't even notice they were supposed to be sports teams. I wondered why there were so many plural words.

dylan604• 1 year ago

These are short little words that are not uncommon even if you are not familiar with sportsball teams. If you struggled unscrambling these words, I'd suggest your vocab is just in dire need of expansion.

hirako2000• 1 year ago

Less localized words would be better. Sports teams in the U.S. are not that popular outside the U.S.

UI is splendid.

gizajob• 1 year ago

Bit too easy to have repeat value

MattSayar2• 1 year ago

Fun! I look forward to seeing what future categories and words are. Do you have to manually curate them each day? How big is your backlog? Is there a way to automate it?

mkate6• 1 year ago

thanks a lot :) yes my friend and I are designing the categories and the words manually with a tiny bit of help from AI tools but you can't fully trust them as they try to sneak in 6 and 4 letter words

MattSayar2• 1 year ago

I have a Wordle-type clone I'm toying with and getting it to wrangle the correct letters is a harder problem than it seems. Hopefully you're able to streamline your design process so it's as painless as possible!

andoando• 1 year ago

For mobile a button to clear the row by the word next to each word would be nice.

kylecazar• 1 year ago

I really like it (I play the NYT games daily). The UI is slick.

As others have mentioned categories could probably have broader/non-US content but that's easy. The site/format itself is great.

markx2• 1 year ago

I see - thank you uMatrix - that you use plausible.io

I block all such tracking, so thanks for allowing me to play without that tracking.

I do realise that such blocking affects your stats so if you could devise a way to track without using an external service that would be great.

fl4tul4• 1 year ago

To tell you a brutal truth, I dislike any timed game.

massive-fail• 1 year ago

Same! However, I think the OP has done a good job. On mini games like this, I guess it doesn't bother me. I only get frustrated if I have invested time and they throw a timer in. Such a dated mechanic.

pnm456785• 1 year ago

The limiting time factor for me was the clicking around on the page. Allowing keyboard input somehow would be a plus.

pnm456785• 1 year ago

It seems not to accept a correct answer, "ladel" for Wednesday, March 26, 2025 (minor spoiler, apologies!)

angry_moose6• 1 year ago

"Ladel" isn't actually in the dictionary:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ladel

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ladel

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/spellcheck/english?q=la...

OED has it as an incorrect/unusual variant:

https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=ladel

It's misspelled constantly on the internet, but "ladle" is the correct spelling.

pnm456785• 1 year ago

Ah, fair enough! Thanks

pnm456785• 1 year ago

I like the calendar where you can go back to play other days. Enhancement request: would be nice for this to have an indicator of which days you have already played.

mkate6• 1 year ago

that's a great point! thanks a lot

jxjnskkzxxhx• 1 year ago

Sports teams? Who cares?

mkate6• 1 year ago

this is just one of the categories. There are other ones available and tomorrow's one won't be about sports :D

cgomez2• 1 year ago

I will never understand responses like this.

DistractionRect2• 1 year ago

I agree, today's challenge was really easy. But I did enjoy the other days, I played all of them!

What I'd like is an option to show the answers after failing (not by default, so you can still choose to replay if you want). For instance, I cannot for the life of me get the music act that's associated with "FALMO".

jihadjihad• 1 year ago

LMFAO?

DistractionRect2• 1 year ago

That was it! I was busy looking for a word rather than an acronym

jpjoi• 1 year ago

This reminds me a lot of NYT strands, in the sense that it’s “multiple themed rounds of classic word game format X” In the strands example, the base word game is a word search in which they break the rules a bit to make it harder. Here it’s a simple word unscrambling. Makes me wonder what other games you could make by following this “themed rounds of X” format.

pnm456785• 1 year ago

Couple of minor bugs, one of which is arguably not a bug: 1. When you play a game for the first time it invites you to make an account. When you make an account, it seems to forget that you played that particular game already. 2. By manipulating the URL you can play games from the future.

WoodenChair• 1 year ago

Quick UI suggestion: Let users playing on desktop type the letters.

Retr0id2• 1 year ago

I spent several seconds trying to click on the "Build your word here" box to put the cursor there

spicybright3• 1 year ago

Just worked through a lot of the puzzles. I love the concept, and I also like how the timer doesn't reset when you switch between them.

3 pieces of feedback:

1. Since your time matters, a start button before a new puzzle is presented would be nice.

2. I wanted to play more puzzles but didn't realize the calendar button up top switched puzzles till reading comments. I think fading the screen with an overlay with the existing buttons and adding a "Play Another?" button would hook people in more.

3. Some of the scrambles are too easy. Maybe that's by design, but an example is "PAWSN" in the apr 4th chess puzzle, it's stupidly obvious compared to the other words.

But again really awesome content and would make an amazing mobile website or app.

spicybright3• 1 year ago

Could you share how you pick each day's words?

mkate6• 1 year ago

we design them ourselves a bit of a manual process but quite fun

snozolli• 1 year ago

"Build your word here" really confused me. I thought that was a text box that I was supposed to activate.

theyinwhy• 1 year ago

Well done. 2 observations: when pressing the letters quickly it does not register them properly. I don't understand why the 5 letter limit.

kdamica• 1 year ago

Fun game but you should disallow plurals. Overall I’d say use the same word rules as Wordle. Almost all my words were plurals and so were uninteresting, but if that was fixed I would play this!

mkate6• 1 year ago

thanks a lot for the feedback and totally agree

nvr219• 1 year ago

I like it!

pure-developer• 1 year ago

The top hint makes it bit too easy, but I guess if there’s only multiple valid words you need to narrow it down by some prompt

jonplackett• 1 year ago

I’m not much of a puzzler, I like a crossword or a sudoku and that’s all really - but I didn’t understand what I was meant to do?

Edit; oh ok I get it now..

It could be fun but now I know what to do it’s not very challenging. The speed is more determined by the speed I can type that the words. Maybe one letter longer?

stephantul• 1 year ago

Very nice! One confusing prompt is “not a valid word” when the word is actually valid, it’s just not the word you are looking for.

mrinterweb• 1 year ago

I would prefer if less plurals were used. Every word in my puzzle ended with an 's' as a plural.

r0fl• 1 year ago

Same

Spurs Hawks Kings Pawns

angry_moose6• 1 year ago

As they're the name of US professional sports teams, that's the official name of the teams.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Hawks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Lions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio_Spurs

Previous puzzles don't have many plurals, but its the correct choice for this puzzle.

zoklet-enjoyer• 1 year ago

That was fun

angry_moose6• 1 year ago

A few pieces of feedback from me:

1) Keyboard input would be really nice, especially playing on desktop

2) A "give up" button instead of a 5 minute timeout would be appreciated

3) It might be more fun/challenging if you don't give the category, but have to guess the category after unscrambling the words.

evanb• 1 year ago

Keyboard is essential; my time was dominated not by the time it took me to solve but the time it took me to click around with my mouse.

Y4448• 1 year ago

Product manager ex. game designer with a number of puzzle/word game in operation here.

- Having a timer (urgency) is usually not a very good idea for thinky games. If you insist on having a timer consider making it count upwards.

- Additionally as other commenters mentioned is the game is a time trial it needs an explicit “Start” button. Also stop the timer when user is not playing e.g. reading the rules.

- There’s no point of having a “Play again” option for a Wordle style daily game, the thinking part is already done, so any replay is just an exercise in dexterity.

- It’s okay to be US-centric actually, doesn’t matter unless you are very serious about monetizing it, and even then being US-centric will work.

- Consider showing rules for first time users before staring the puzzle.

- Consider having some sort of overarching thing in your puzzle, so it’s not just five words on a specific topic to guess, but something more, like a hidden word across all five etc. This makes a delightful discovery moment and sometimes might work as a clue.

JKCalhoun2• 1 year ago

Agree that timers suck the fun out of a game like this. I avoid any solitaire game with a timer for example.

Y4448• 1 year ago

Some crossword people like having their timers (see NYT Games app for example), but as I’ve mentioned the timers are counting up, not triggering any negative conditions, and can be turned off completely.

accrual• 1 year ago

The OG Windows 3 solitaire has an option to disable the timer, it's one of the first things I uncheck. I did "speedrun" solitaire in my computer classes for fun, though. :)

megadata2• 1 year ago

and even then being US-centric will work.

The world has sadly changed a lot in recent months.

bdhcuidbebe2• 1 year ago

What did I miss, did Trump replace the english language now?

doctorpangloss• 1 year ago

The timer doesn’t matter.

Nobody needs rules for this game.

xyst• 1 year ago

This is 90% of my thoughts as well.

Another note I had is: keep the words to a specific category rather than a broad category.

For example: the today’s puzzle of “professional sports teams” had 4/5 of the teams from the NBA. The 5th answer was either the Detroit “Lions” (a professional _American football_ team) or more likely the London “Lions” (a _British_ professional basketball team).

HenryBemis• 1 year ago

I live in the EU. I have no idea about US hand-egg teams. As long as these are proper words (e.g. Bucks, Lions) and they are not "rizzz" (or whatever other moronic sound comes out of people with 45 IQ) then people will play the game.

FlamingMoe• 1 year ago

"a timer (urgency) is usually not a very good idea for thinky games" 100% agree. I hate the timer on the NY Times mini puzzle. I like these types of simple games for unwinding, and a timer makes it more stressful.

binarymax• 1 year ago

Contrarily, I love the mini timer, because it’s something to beat. The mini is too easy of a puzzle. The NYT crossword is more for the thinking type - it also has a timer, but its less in your face and I don’t feel the pressure.

fiddlerwoaroof• 1 year ago

This reminds me a bit of Boggle which really needs a timer. If anything, the timer on this is too long: I did it in 0:32 and was better than 53% of other users, which suggests to me the timer should be about a minute

zamadatix• 1 year ago

They do give the option in the settings for this reason but I think that's the best part about the mini specifically, it enables the daily leaderboards to work even for folks who's friend group doesn't sit down and do full Saturday level crosswords regularly. I think the midis/larges are a better balance if you're just looking for relaxing but short solo play and there I wouldn't really mind if the timer was off by default (or not, there is less competition at that point).

tchock23• 1 year ago

The timer makes it competitive. Every day I "compete" with a friend of mine across the country to see who can finish the mini crossword faster. Without that it wouldn't be fun (for me at least). I unwind with the bigger crossword and just ignore the timer at the top.

ohnoabigshark• 1 year ago

The overarching "thing" in the puzzle is a great idea. Choose a column that spells another answer when you get them all right. Works even if you expand the size of the word grid.

huijzer• 1 year ago

It’s okay to be US-centric actually, doesn’t matter unless you are very serious about monetizing it, and even then being US-centric will work.

As a European who on a typical day uses/watched/reads more English than my native language, I agree. Except sports teams and other more locally phenomena. Those are the worst.

doublerabbit• 1 year ago

I am from the UK, I hate word games that specialise with US English spelling over than British English.

Getting the answer wrong when trying to spell the correct answer in British English spelling ruins the game.

aardshark• 1 year ago

Nah, it's very annoying to be country-centric. The NYT game clues are just so fucking American sometimes and it's very irritating. It's difficult to avoid this altogether of course, but staying away from sports and politics helps a good bit.

cognomano• 1 year ago

May be making the countdown optional will be better. I like it!

4887d30omd8• 1 year ago

This is good feedback. Is there a single resource you would recommend for someone somewhat interested in game design?

Y4448• 1 year ago

If you want a general overview try finding a book called “Fundamentals of Fame Design” by Ernest Adams. It is a sensible intro, after that - just dive into thematic communities and do your own things.

I know nothing about formal game design education sorry.

bagels• 1 year ago

I agree about the timer. I almost quit after 10 seconds because of the timer.

ugh123• 1 year ago

There’s no point of having a “Play again” option for a Wordle style daily game, the thinking part is already done, so any replay is just an exercise in dexterity.

What if i'm handing it to a friend/spouse to play to beat my time?

Consider having some sort of overarching thing in your puzzle, so it’s not just five words on a specific topic to guess, but something more, like a hidden word across all five etc. This makes a delightful discovery moment and sometimes might work as a clue.

That just sounds like your idea for a different type of game. I like his current idea for this game.

Y4448• 1 year ago

What if i'm handing it to a friend/spouse to play to beat my time?

I generally find it more effective to improve the parts that concern most of the audience, like the timer that is seen by every player. The pass-and-play use case is valid but seems pretty rare.

That just sounds like your idea for a different type of game. I like his current idea for this game.

Yes, it’s a part of giving feedback, the author might not like any of my comments and is free to ignore them, it’s their game. But why do _you_ seem so irritated about it?

scottmf• 1 year ago

What if i'm handing it to a friend/spouse to play to beat my time?

then that works better with his suggestion for a timer rather than a countdown

you could retain a challenge aspect by showing average time to solve (or your result compared to others; “You did better than 94% of people!” etc)

bahmboo• 1 year ago

Thank you. I really appreciate product people.

Anon4Now• 1 year ago

- Consider having some sort of overarching thing in your puzzle, so it’s not just five words on a specific topic to guess, but something more, like a hidden word across all five etc. This makes a delightful discovery moment and sometimes might work as a clue.

You've essentially described the Jumble puzzle, which appeared in daily newspapers. It's been around since 1954, but I'm not surprised to see it reinvented since few people get a daily newspaper anymore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumble

redbell2• 1 year ago

..you are very serious about monetizing it

Ads aside, I'm curious to know what you think would be a good monetizing strategy for this kind of games (simple, online): subscriptions, sponsorship, donations..?

Y4448• 1 year ago

Unfortunately, I think ads is the most realistic way to go.

Sponsorships and/or donations would be a nice “beer money” bonus.

Subscriptions are PITA and too much hassle unless you’re doing them via some third party and they won’t bring a good amount of money at the “online daily puzzle in a browser” scale.

There are more exotic ways like licensing your puzzles to other sites, like online newspaper puzzle pages, Puzzmo is going in this direction IIRC.

2muchcoffeeman• 1 year ago

I think the timer exists since there are only so many 5 letter words. And you have just shown players the letters.

You can complete this by just starting words with the letters available of which there are only so many combinations.

slig• 1 year ago

Hi! I'm working on a project that could benefit from that kind of experience. Do you offer consulting services?

Y4448• 1 year ago

Sorry, I don't have capacity for more than a few comments here or a casual chat once in a while.

Kuyawa• 1 year ago

What's the best way to monetize a game like this?

VerminOctopus1• 1 year ago

I really dislike your suggestion to eliminate the timer. You frame it like it’s objectively the better choice since you’re a professional - however it’s not. It’s a design decision that leads to a sense of urgency that many players enjoy. Games don’t need to be for everyone. This drive towards the most universally appealing, milquetoast design decisions neuters games.

oliwary• 1 year ago

This is really good feedback I think. My puzzle has an overarching thing with down direction also forming words: https://squareword.org/

I think that would not work here as there are though as there are not enough combinations. I quite like this one though, combining the unscramble mechanic with a category. A bit like a combination of connections and waffle.

For the "play again" issue, in my latest game https://spaceword.org I made it an open-ended puzzle, where there is no correct answer, so people can keep improving as long as they want.

wordglyph• 1 year ago

You got some fun games! I like your simple direction ui on spaceword. And I enjoyed the time it took to solve square word. It's good to have play again so players can get better. I implemented it on https://wordglyph.xyz for same reasons. It's nice to see players discover the stick strategy over time and get better.

aerhardt• 1 year ago

Reading comments about a puzzle game coming from a "product manager ex. game designer with a number of puzzle/word game in operation" is one of the main reasons why I come to HN.

nrjames• 1 year ago

I made a word game while playing with a few ideas, like anonymous usernames and leaderboards. I still poke at some aspects of it. There’s a rare scoring bug I need to isolate and fix. Anyhow, feel free to look. :)

https://www.gorillasuit.io/

Edit: coming up with a reasonable algorithm for scoring is far more difficult than it looks. I guess most of the word games floating around don't have scoring for a reason.

whimsicalism• 1 year ago

i think this was a bad first puzzle for posting on hn, seemed a bit on the easy side as well, but nice concept

Alifatisk2• 1 year ago

What professional sports team has the letters 'P', 'R', 'U', 'S', 'S'?

angry_moose6• 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio_Spurs

Alifatisk2• 1 year ago

Ahhh, thanks!

tlarkworthy• 1 year ago

It was spurs that made me think it was UK centric, lions as well is valid for England too

youaskiansjjd• 1 year ago

Boring and derivative.

megadata2• 1 year ago

Might want to have an international version too?

I don't know US sport teams.

bbayer• 1 year ago

For some tips :) https://theunscrambled.com/anagram-solver

bilater• 1 year ago

Cool. I think low hanging fruit to add drag n drop. Some options are libraries like dnd-kit or hello-pangea/dnd.

ph4evers• 1 year ago

Love it!

LtWorf• 1 year ago

Why is "loins" not a valid word? AFAIK it is.

I am the maintainer of parolottero, another word game (I made it to be used on plasma-mobile) and finding good word lists is not easy at all.

I have a decent one for italian but not for english. Which one are you using?

Retr0id2• 1 year ago

It's not the name of an americentric sports team, though.

jayknight• 1 year ago

I didn't even notice the category until you said that, and was wondering the same thing.

tartoran• 1 year ago

For anyone interested in word games there's a very fun and free wordle like game I ended up playing daily for the past year, check out https://www.threemagicwords.app/ I'm not the author so this is not a shameless plug, just a good game that is playable on your phone without installing any app.

tasuki• 1 year ago

Oh no, that is crazy addicting. I usually don't fall for these types of things, but immediately got hooked on this one.

tuukkah2• 1 year ago

Seconded. It's somewhat similar to this one as well.

eps2• 1 year ago

This is really good. Thanks for mentioning it.

kevinventullo• 1 year ago

So I actually like the timer and potential competitive aspect of it. If you want to lean into that, consider adding leaderboards and percentiles.

joshdavham• 1 year ago

Will you open source this by any chance? I'd be curious how it was built!

frankdenbow• 1 year ago

Nice work! Would like to see what the correct result would have been for ones I didnt get after the time expires. Keep going!

skupig• 1 year ago

Nice UI, but I think someone needs to say it: there's no novel concept here, I've seen the exact same game printed in magazines and on kids' menus. If you're trying to catch people's attention, you need a clever gimmick that they haven't seen before.

globular-toast• 1 year ago

Yeah, I don't really get it. Five unrelated anagrams? I was expecting something to happen but it's just the anagrams that I did in a fraction of the time given despite not having a clue what sports those teams play, assuming they exist.

rco8786• 1 year ago

At first I though I was supposed to make one word using one letter from each row. I think that might be a fun variation, honestly.

godelski3• 1 year ago

First off, I love the game. Your mom isn't just placating you. It is fun.

Second, I think given all this advice a real clear example can be seen by looking at NYT's Wordle[0]. Instructions are the first thing you see and cover the puzzle. You then click start.

Importantly, the instructions have an example. While the puzzle is extremely intuitive, an example can eliminate almost any ambiguity (intuitive for most people but maybe not kids, non-native English speakers, or just things like someone shoves the game into their friends face. Who knows). There can be a button on the side to show instructions again, which should cover the puzzle and stop the timer.

  > Having a timer (urgency) is usually not a very good idea for thinky games.

Personally, I like the timer. The game is simple and clearly meant to be played in a small fast setting, so I think this works. Can also reduce pressure (as well as induce) since someone might think "oh, I got 5 minutes to play" instead of having to "sit down".

There's plenty of "thinky games" that have timers: Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune are two good examples. Almost any TV game is timed. I don't think there's a problem with this and the pressure can make it fun while also conveying that it won't take a person all day.

  > There’s no point of having a “Play again”

Could be good to show solutions. If not, maybe also count "attempts"? IDK

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html

latexr• 1 year ago

Almost any TV game is timed.

For the benefit of the audience watching, not the player. You wouldn’t want someone consuming the whole show because they do not make a move. There’s little reason to care about time limits on a game someone plays by themselves.

esperent2• 1 year ago

Personally, I like the timer.

Personally, I hate the timer. It makes me feel stressed. I guessed the first word then decided to stop playing because of the timer.

It's clear while some people appreciate it, many people won't play the game if it has a timer. So, make it optional.

godelski3• 1 year ago

There's a 5 minute timer you can effectively guess all permutations in that time. Ignore the timer. The only real limitation is coming from you.

There needs to be some limit like how wordle limits the number of guesses. The timer is good in that it can put pressure in especially considering how simple the game is. The long length means almost everyone has enough time

chester195• 1 year ago

This was super fun and just played the whole back catalogue.

SPOILER BELOW

Took a few games to notice but one minor issue is that in each game the pattern for each row is the same, e.g 3rd row is 2,4,1,3,5. Randomising this would make it better.

bkvvldmr• 1 year ago

Love it!

cgomez2• 1 year ago

Pleasant and responsive lightweight design, but the game itself just has no difficulty to it.

Tried four puzzles and all were done in 15 seconds.

wileydragonfly• 1 year ago

I like it.

bbstats• 1 year ago

Little too easy

windowshopping• 1 year ago

Is this a word game? In all honesty I don't see how it isn't just 5 anagrams with a related theme. I don't know if I'd call that a word game.

whiterook6• 1 year ago

It's nice but it takes a million clicks to get to another day's puzzle. Tap to close the results page, Tap the toast to show the close button, tap the close button, tap the calendar, tap the day. Maybe some big left and right arrows at the top of the page?

whacko_quacko• 1 year ago

I like it

tuukkah2• 1 year ago

I think you shouldn't include proper nouns (like there's one in the Apr 6 solution).

mottaquikarim• 1 year ago

I ended up building a word game last year for the wife and I to play, we kinda forgot about it but this post reminded me (so thanks for that, OP)

Just visited and turns out some people still play!

https://playfreestyle.co/new

maest• 1 year ago

Professional Sports Teams

All American teams, so I got very few of them / care very little about them.

ShamilDibirov• 1 year ago

Would be great to have "Hint" button

electromech• 1 year ago

I love the game! I hate hate hate the timer though. Other than the timer I'd happily add this to my daily word game routine.

thecmrfrd• 1 year ago

I like this concept! I've seen other games like https://wordputt.com which try to go semantic instead of categorical.

willf• 1 year ago

I so hate timers. I left immediately. Sure, have a count up timer for those who what it, but make sure to allow it to be turned off permanently

anonu• 1 year ago

Reminds me of https://www.sporcle.com/

ucirello• 1 year ago

les circuits de consécration sociale, sera d'autant plus efficace plus la distance sociale de l'objet consacrée - Bourdieu

rcyeh• 1 year ago

Nice! One nit: if playing an archive game (from a previous date), when opening the calendar, would you show not the current month, but the month of the game? This would make it easier to go back to other dates.

coldtrait• 1 year ago

I like it because it scratches my jumble itch.

bhtru• 1 year ago

Someone needs to tell me what word could there be with TCAAN?

What dictionary are you using OP?

edit: IT'S CATAN.

Smh

genezeta3• 1 year ago

While the game is ok, there's unfortunately a problem on Firefox on Android.

I know, who cares, only three people in the planet use Firefox on Android. But if you want to know anyway...

The problem is the sizes are not adjusted correctly and so the fixed header/upper part overlaps the scrambled word list, almost completely hiding the first word. You can, through some tricky scrolling, manage to see it and then solve it. But it's tricky. And ugly.

MrJohz• 1 year ago

Fwiw, I am one of the other two people with Firefox on Android and am not having this issue, so it might be a question of screen size rather than browser?

genezeta3• 1 year ago

Could be, but I've tried on the same phone on Chrome and it works there.

cookie_monsta• 1 year ago

The other guy checking in here. No problems with FF on Android for me either

stevage• 1 year ago

It should show instructions the first time, without prompting. I was just confused for a long time.

The icons at the start and end of each row were distracting and confusing.

glitchc• 1 year ago

Great idea, like the game. Thanks for making and sharing!

rao-d• 1 year ago

First of all, great game, just the kind I love. Personally, I love the timer. I can see varying opinions though. Perhaps a toggle for easy mode (no timer) or hard mode (timer, track and beat your own time)

div3rs3• 1 year ago

Nice job! Pretty fun game.

Only improvement ideas I have are for a smoother start for new players:

1. Let the user start the game themselves so that they have a chance to read the rules without a stressful first impression.

2. Use a different label text than "Build your word here" as it sounds like a drag and drop target rather than an output.

samg19• 1 year ago

- love the concept, it was unclear at first how to delete a single letter when the button clears the whole word. - I see the comments about a timer but maybe the user can have the option to enable/disable. - Ability to make words more challenging - ability to play previous day games - pop-up instructions for new users - would my mom know what to do when playing for the first time?

moomin• 1 year ago

One small piece of feedback: typically these games do not allow proper nouns, because there’s too many of them. So having “Catan” be a valid word is pretty awful.

pope_meat• 1 year ago

My favorite part about your game is the A B testing with your mom liking it and not liking it.

Your mom liked the game I played with her too.

Got em.

eps2• 1 year ago

On an older iPad I get "Application error: a client-side exception has occurred while loading www.whatsit.today (see the browser console for more information)." neatly centred on an otherwise blank page.

admiralrohan• 1 year ago

It starts the timer before I can understand what it is. So annoying.

alanbernstein• 1 year ago

Cool - it's nearly a subset of Jumble, which I prefer because of the secondary mechanism of solving a pun to guess backwards.

hn8726• 1 year ago

What I don't get is whether the mechanics of selecting letters are supposed to be significant. It's pretty odd to click `a b c`, then missclick `a` again and end up with `b c` which means I have to click `b` and `c` only to go for `a b c d` all over again

n-gauge• 1 year ago

Just feedback from me: I enjoyed it and found it non frustrating to use. Not sure if I would create an account for it though.

greybox• 1 year ago

That was fun, thank you! Whatsit Daily Challenge Completed in: 3:28

#1 (1:02) #2 (0:43) #3 (0:29) #4 (0:43) #5 (0:32)

https://www.whatsit.today/

jamesdhutton2• 1 year ago

It was fun. Couple of suggestions:

- It gave me “TCAAN” which stumped me. Afterwards I pasted it into the Internet Anagram Server, which failed to find any acronyms for it. So I can say with some confidence I don’t think it’s a valid word. Suggest making sure you’re using a dictionary similar to Wordle’s one.

- The game should reveal the solution at the end if the player fails to guess any words.

bogtog• 1 year ago

Catan! (of settling fame)

jamesdhutton2• 1 year ago

Ahhh. Proper noun though right? I would suggest excluding proper nouns.

djaychela• 1 year ago

Came here to say exactly this. I let the timer expire and was expecting to be able to see the answer rather than resort to an anagram solver site...

SamBam2• 1 year ago

The game ought to make it explicit that proper names are allowed.

But, personally, I would remove proper names, to make it more like most other word games (wordle, spelling bee, jumble, etc.). Crosswords do have proper names, but they've got the clue context to go with them.

ascorbic• 1 year ago

I like it, but here's my feedback:

- let me use keyboard input - don't include proper nouns! I did't get catan because I wasn't expecting that - show the answers at the end. Still didn't get catan after, and anagram solvers didn't find it. It was only when I came here that I saw the answer

derdi• 1 year ago

Nice game. Tedious to use on a laptop with a trackpad. You should allow keyboard input.

Managing accounts is a huge headache both for yourself and for your users. It's a bunch of code and responsibility for you to manage people's private data securely. It's one more password to manage for your users. You could just use cookies to track daily progress, like catfishing.net does. So what if that doesn't let me have my data available across browsers? It's just a game, tracking progress does not matter that much.

ms7892• 1 year ago

Addictive. What was third word?

nkrisc• 1 year ago

Saw timer, closed tab. Would try it if there's no timer.

dr_• 1 year ago

Is there an option where if you don’t guess a word, it tells you what it was (at least after the timer is up?).

tlh• 1 year ago

It can be a slog to build and release a game like this, so well done on getting it out! Personally, I think it’s quite well polished UI wise. UX wise I guess keyboard input as others have said would be nice. On mobile I really want to drag the letters to re-order them, - but - at the same time it works just fine. We’ve had loads of feedback for https://puzzlist.com/stackdown and I felt pretty overwhelmed so if you feel like that, be encouraged, squint your eyes and see all the positivity from what you’ve made!

uptownfunk• 1 year ago

It’s good, well done

y-curious• 1 year ago

I got the letters "AACNT" and even cheated online. The only word online dictionaries could make was "TACAN" and it wasn't accepted.

tczMUFlmoNk• 1 year ago

Since the category is "Games", the answer is [Settlers of] CATAN.

1000100_1000101• 1 year ago

I got stuck on Catan for a while too, as I assumed it was like most games and didn't use names.

At some point I just moved on, and solved the next word, Chess, in like 2 seconds. The results claimed I spent a whole pile of time on Chess, since it has no idea which result I'm thinking of solving (though all the wrong guesses for Catan should have been a clue that the time should have gone towards Catan.)

I'm not sure the per-word time values are useful if they can't be trusted to be accurate.

ulfw• 1 year ago

Your mom loves you. Cherish that! I wish mine was still alive

astura• 1 year ago

I hate anagrams.

dybber• 1 year ago

Didn’t see that there was a theme at first, and I think after trying some of the other dates having that theme makes it too easy

wrsh07• 1 year ago

This is fun! I like the timing challenge but for many people this is a turnoff (there's a great interview with Zach Gage^ where he discusses research - some people are unable to critically think / learn new things while under pressure)

So giving a sandbox where there is no pressure will probably be more fun for a large subset of players

My only real complaint: please include a puzzle version number in the auto copied share link so that if I solve yesterday's you know that's different from you solving today's

Incidentally you could probably let people try historic puzzles from the link if you wanted (compete on that one vs play today's), that would be a nice wordle feature

^ I think the humans make games podcast

nisse72• 1 year ago

I like the idea but there were several examples where I found a word but it was not the word the game wanted, and I was told "invalid word". Examples: I found "STONE" but the correct word was "NOTES", or "SPILL" vs "PILLS" etc. Extremely frustrating!

nazgul17• 1 year ago

And don't forget TONES!

karpatic• 1 year ago

My friend whos loves word games said she liked it. Asked for the link so I sent it along. Critique was that proper nouns should be removed as it caused a great deal of uncertainy about weather the remaining words would be known.

niccl• 1 year ago

is it intentional that one arrangement of the letters is correct when another, equally correct, arrangement is wrong? eg 'L L I P S' can be 'SPILL' or PILLS, but only PILLS is accepted. Similarly for NOTES being 'correct' but STONE being wrong.

alkonaut• 1 year ago

As umpteen other have said: drop the timer and add drag & drop and it's a winner. The problem (compared to wordle) I think is that it requires manual work to make the categories. If you want to rank the results I think number of guesses is better than shortest time.

But it also feels like one of these things where a ChatGPT could help you create the game data very easily. It excels as these things like "give me 1000 categories of 6 letter words grouped with 5 in each category". That would have been a chore, but now it's just easy. Not sure if that's what you did here already.

vladnedelcu• 1 year ago

seems like a wordle with a super clean interface. I like the animations on completion and not guessing a word. I also suggest that maybe the animations are shorted as this is a time focused game, I want as a user as little distractions as possible.

sdotdev• 1 year ago

Your moms right for sure

I think adding a theme to all the words like food, names or something random like that could make it more fun. It could also make it easier to there's that too. Nice game though

realxrobau• 1 year ago

This is your only post, and you haven't responded to anything in 4 days. Was this just a marketing ploy?

blaix• 1 year ago

I tried "coins" so many times, getting so angry, before reading the title that said "video game characters"

Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?

Related Stories