This is great! I've been looking for an alternative to this for a while: https://g1.globo.com/jogos/dito/
This is definitely the kind of game I'd play on a flight.
It seems to disallow valid words made with the same letters, which doesn't feel fair. (I don't want to spoil an answer, but -- especially when the word it insists on is arguably French!)
I opened the tab in the background and when i got around to it later somehow i lost the game.... i think you need an official "start" button to prevent this.
Really rewarding keyboard UX on this. Typing felt great. I couldn't figure out how to shuffle or give up via the keyboard. Shuffle with escape would make sense.
The word games that have been posted in the last few days feature a timer component, and it's game over when you miss the timer. I think they'd be more rewarding if it weren't sudden death. Instead it should just let you play through and give you a score. Especially if it is going to pick obscure words (as another commenter says - arguably one word isn't English and that feels like a bad reason to "lose").
Fun! As others mentioned, it's unclear why certain words are rejected. Without clues, there's no reason the player would know which of several anagrams is the "right" one. Seems like it'd be better to accept any valid word, or perhaps have some kind of bonus for finding all of them.
I hate games of this kind. "You failed. Try again tomorrow." I won't be back. It wasn't enough fun to remember. And I'm not likely to upvote because of these reasons (so it won't appear in my 'upvoted submissions')
I tried "KITERS" and "TRIKES" at the 5 letter level, but the app specifically wanted "STRIKE." It kinda demoralized me to have come up with two answers and not be able to proceed, I realized that it wasn't worth trying to guess before the clue came up so I quit out.
I guess I'll check back later and try to remember that I can't have the tab open in the background? :)
EDIT: OK, I found the previous puzzles link. Cute! Though I got a bug on the second one - (ROT13 for spoilers) apparently the answer was "tenavgr" but I put in "grnevat" and it still accepted it (but other prompts had not accepted alternate-but-valid words)
I really enjoyed this! I do agree with the other comments that a larger vocabulary would be nice. The way some games handle this is by giving bonus points for words that are unintended by the author but are perceived as valid. Or maybe giving extra time? IMO, keep the vocab a bit limited, though (maybe top 30k words or similar).
It's a good game. A little easier than wordle because you can go back and forth with variations on a few words by adding s and ed. Maybe a harder variant could be you go to the next level with a new set of letters still adding one more.
Another variant could be you have to solve like a stack of them, so like you have 5 of these then to get to the next level all 5 have to progress, each with a different pool of letters.
A game rather like this is described in Gwen Raverat’s Edwardian memoir, Period Piece. There you have to keep finding new words one letter longer, and they get ridiculous combos like TRUMPET, STRUMPET, (thou) TRUMPETST, STRUMPETST…
Pretty fun. But I saw this issue come up on multiple days: Letters were AIERNGT for the final word of day #2. I tried INGRATE. Didn't work. Then I tried TEARING. That worked. But then on the win screen, it said GRANITE. Huh...
I liked playing the game! A few things that worked well for me - a gradual ladder meant I knew word length was going to increase by 1 and was prepared mentally, the timer was not in my face distracting me as I tried thinking, the clue comes around the 25s mark to help me get unstuck. What didn't work for me was valid words not being accepted, leaving you a little demoralized. I see a lot of suggestions already around this and I don't have anything more specific to add to that.
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[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 1150 ms ] threadThe word games that have been posted in the last few days feature a timer component, and it's game over when you miss the timer. I think they'd be more rewarding if it weren't sudden death. Instead it should just let you play through and give you a score. Especially if it is going to pick obscure words (as another commenter says - arguably one word isn't English and that feels like a bad reason to "lose").
- I was intently staring at letters and didn't notice you get a definition as a hint! Maybe the hint UI needs a tweak.
- it needs to allow permutations that are also words, or at least provide an additional reward for finding those (maybe an extra half point).
- there should be a "clear" button next to shuffle.
- there should be a "pause" button which hides everything and stops the timer. My waitress came by as I was playing and I lost.
Bit of feedback, should the timer pause when reading the how to play or opening settings?
I hate games of this kind. "You failed. Try again tomorrow." I won't be back. It wasn't enough fun to remember. And I'm not likely to upvote because of these reasons (so it won't appear in my 'upvoted submissions')
EDIT: OK, I found the previous puzzles link. Cute! Though I got a bug on the second one - (ROT13 for spoilers) apparently the answer was "tenavgr" but I put in "grnevat" and it still accepted it (but other prompts had not accepted alternate-but-valid words)
But overall, this was fun!