HN Explorer

Show HN: Nine Letter Word – Daily Puzzle (nineletterwordgame.com)

62 points by mahin ↗ HN
I've been playing Wordle and remembered this puzzle game I used to play with my grandfather. It's inspired by the block puzzles in many newspapers but made to be shorter: just guess the nine letter word.

So I made a quick thing to play with my family like we used to. I thought you guys might enjoy it.

31 comments

[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 81.8 ms ] thread
greenyoda
I liked the "shuffle" feature. Shuffling a few times helped me figure out what the word was.
mahin
I need to change it so it doesn't shuffle letters in an order too close to the solution. Maybe 3 letters in the same order is too similar?
redlohr
Any of the eight tuples should probably not be in order ( or just let one of them through ). An easier method might be to limit shuffling to once every minute.

Neat concept!

edit: burningfrog's suggestion is an alternative to shuffle that would be even better https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30221479

webmaven
I wouldn't bother, far too many people are capable of 'reading' the letters in arbitrary directions as in games such as Boggle. If you eliminate all orderings that include adjacent vertical, diagonal, zigzag, crossing, and reverse directions, you aren't going to be left with much.
flazor
First thing I tried was was tapping the letters to fill the answer input. Might be a nice feature to add.
mahin
Definitely. Would tapping a selected letter deselect it? I thought it might be a bit confusing if you deselect a letter that's not the latest one. Maybe a 'Clear' button would help.
montroser
I think a 'Delete' button which would delete the latest in order. So tapping the letters would act like typing on a keyboard, and 'Delete' would like Backspace.

NYT Spelling Bee works like this and it's a pretty similar interface.

smeej
You just need a 4th row with a back button to delete, a refresh button to reset, and an OK or check button to submit.
flazor
I’d say tapping an unused letter would disable it and grey it out. Then have a backspace button to remove latest letter, re-enabling it in the grid.
huhtenberg
No need for deselecting. Just add Undo and Reset buttons and that'll do it nicely.

For a minimalist version of the same, add just the Undo button and do a full board reset on long-press.

BurningFrog
Even better if you can rearrange them within the square.

Much like you would on a Scrabble rack.

Max_Ehrlich
This is really cool. First thing I looked for was a Wordle-type "share" button.

Maybe add a Wordle-style share button? Then everyone can play this with their friends.

krallja
It’s at the top, now.
neogodless
"Share" seems to just use the built in device sharing, and shares the URL. It's much more interesting if you can copy your personal results (how long it took, if you got hints) to your keyboard and then share it however you like!
krallja
On iOS it shares:

Nine Letter Word #5 29 seconds 0 hints

pbhjpbhj
On FF on quite-old Android 7.0 I chose share (within the web page), then "copy to clipboard" and the text is:

    https://www.nineletterwordgame.com/
Not quite what I was expecting! If I send to notepad then the first line is "null" and the second is the address as above.

I did 23s but I think the grid form makes it much slower, I prefer it Countdown (a UK television quiz) style, just in a row.

neogodless
I'm on Oxygen OS 10.3.8 (based on Android 10) and I got the mediocre "share to app" menu. I chose Gmail to see the text, and it was just the URL. I'll blame about 50% on this share menu, since it doesn't even include "clipboard" (which is weird, I've had that in the past on Android, but maybe OxygenOS removed it for some inane reason), but I'd still prefer the "copy to clipboard" default behavior that Wordle/Dordle/Nerdle have.
pxeger1
Really nice puzzle design. Just a few UI/UX things:

I was confused by the fact it lets you enter a letter more times than appear in the box. It would be nice to have the same limit that prevents you entering more than 9 letters, for when you enter too many letters. It would also be good to have a transitory popup explaining why you can't enter more letters.

The "incorrect" popup should go away after a while, or be manually dismissible.

I think the enter button should be a more stand-out colour.

Because the word "ANSWER" is in all-capitals, it looks like it's an example guess, but it's only 6 letters, which is a little bit confusing. I'd suggest making it Titlecase and left-aligned.

pharmakom
I dislike how you cannot make incremental progress in this game (compared to wordle, hangman, etc)
jmull
That’s quite nicely done.

Since it’s timed, I suggest to show the timer.

smeej
I didn't realize it was timed until I finished reading the directions.

I'd have liked an option where it didn't show the letters until I chose to reveal them, and started the timer at that point.

I knew the word right away, but tapping the letters didn't enter them, so I went to read what I thought would be the directions, which didn't help me with that specific question, and then finally figured out I just had to type the answer in the box and submit, so I wound up 25 seconds in instead of <5.

Obviously these are first-use-only problems, but they'd be nice improvements for first-timers!

xigoi
I found it unclear whether the letters can be placed in any order, or it has something to do with the grad. You might want to clarify that it's just an anagram.
hnlmorg
The presentation of this is nice but if you're hoping this might blow up like Wordle then you'd need a few more gimmicks because what you've built there is basically just a Countdown Conundrum (https://wiki.apterous.org/Conundrum) laid out as a square; and there's already lots of these puzzles online (plus literally decades of TV footage from Countdown too, eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n9aILIF_ms).
boudin
At the same time Wordle is just the game Lingo, no?
culi
Yeah I don't the fact that it already technically exists plays much of a factor in how likely it is to blow up. Every now and then a new game/app comes out that renames some Japanese puzzle game and blows up.

E.g. "hashiwokakero/fences/hashi/chopsticks" or "slitherlink/fences" or anyone of Conceptis' (underrated) apps

culi
Wow you weren't kidding. I just looked it up and the rules for Lingo are virtually exactly the same! 5 letters, 6 guesses, and everything
phyzix5761
Cool idea. I would suggest verifying the solution server side. It took me just a few minutes to figure out how to get the answer in the browser's console because the solution is given on the client side.
snowman-yelling
Why can’t you just play the game without cheating? Same thing can be done with Wordle…
ppetty
So I the input element is missing an attribute to turn off autocorrect or autocomplete. I typed LIFE for one challenge & iOS’s keyboard gave the rest away.
gulabjamuns
Are there archives of this game so i can play earlier days?

I have been playing this daily since this thread was created and love it.