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  • Hacker News
  • the score should include how many bonus words you found (out of how many there were in total) and instead of time it should count how many tries you made because technically you could brute force this and try all combinations. counting each try would eliminate that (for anyone trying to get a high score)
    by em-bee
  • You might make a wrong guess add a little penalty time to the clock.

    I agree that the "share" representation should include the number of bonus words found. Or just the triple of "total words / tries / wall-clock time."

    It would also make sense to share some kind of metric for "how early did you find the longest word."

    by quuxplusone
  • I'm stuck. Does that mean I chose the wrong word earlier and used up an essential letter? Does the sequence of word guesses matter? Is there an Undo feature so I can back up and try a different order of guesses? Can I get a hint? Is there a way to give up and see the solution (order of word guesses)?
    by acrophiliac
  • Gemini can solve them if you need a hint or want to give up and see the solution.
    by blfr
  • This was helpful feedback thank you. I've tried to make this more clear with a new tutorial and updataed instructions
    by pompomsheep
  • You're not stuck, the board only removes letters and connections that are not used by any other word (probably excluding "bonus words"). So the word(s) you're missing are still on the board.

    No hint feathre though, the hints are the letters going away. You'll probably have to use a scrabble search or something.

    by pfg_
  • Great puzzle! Is there a way to give up and see all the answers? After 20 minutes or so still have 8 words to find. (Not a native English speaker.)
    by iku
  • +1 for this. Also not a native speaker and can't for the life of find the two last words in the #5
    by jllyhill
  • There are a couple of games like this on Android I play:

    https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/com.vayunmathur.gam...

    https://github.com/plhosk/wordtracer

    They're both on FDroid

    by msla
  • https://squaredle.app/
    by aevv
  • Was gonna say, reminded me a lot of Squaredle!
    by Brendinooo
  • Cool game. Snus isn't in the word list btw

    Found six bonus words.

    by NDlurker
  • I enjoyed this and loved the minimal UI, good copywriting, and tasteful animations. My brain gets a little bit stuck on words that I can see but aren’t valid because of a missing connection, but I get that this is one of the main points of the puzzle. Anyway, great job!
    by sumul
  • This was definitely a challenge until I figured out how it works. I originally was confused by the connections and started off embarrassingly slow, but once I got a few words and letters started to disappear, I was able to power through it pretty quickly. A solid game. Suggest adding a timed option so users can brag/compare/share their time.
    by scamdrill
  • https://zanagrams.com/puzzles/5.json
    by cryptoboy2283
  • Nice game! I found 20 words.

    I was a bit stunned by the concept of "bonus words". I found that every word should count. Also because some words are just plural forms (e.g. stroke+s), so kinda cheep?!

    Keep ups the good work!

    by dpfu
  • "bonus words" are often obscure or embarrassing in some way, so you're not required to find them to win
    by stevage
  • I think the board (and disappearing letters) are made with a list of words in mind. Thus, to complete the puzzle (dissolve all letters) you cannot count the bonus words as they were not accounted when creating the letter graph.
    by frotaur
  • Wow, this post blew up! Thank you everyone for all the helpful feedback. I’ve just deployed a few updates:

      - Added a short playable tutorial for new players to learn how the game works.

  - Added a timer below the grid. You can hide this in the settings if you don’t want the extra pressure!

  - Fixed some bonus words based on your recommendations.
    I also made a bonus HN themed puzzle as a thanks for all the feedback - https://zanagrams.com/hackernews
    by pompomsheep
  • The playable tutorial is brilliant. It's a very fun game, well done!
    by nicbou
  • Bookmarked the site! It is a fun puzzle, NYT should add it to their games.
    by jhedlund
  • Congratulations on your launch! It’s cool seeing all the word games on here taking off
    by purple-leafy
  • Very cool! Idea: show the definition of the word when you find it, so you can learn new words.

    (edit: ah, I see they are shown later)

    by pgt
  • If it was really an “HN themed puzzle”, all the letters would be A or I and the minimum word length would be 2.

    I’m kidding of course - great game!

    by mega_dean
  • Wow, I found the Hacker News one way easier than normal (01:15). I'm devouring these, though—every day you release one, I'll play it!
    by oneeyedpigeon
  • A hint would maybe be good. You could highlight the first letter and a direction, for example.

    The share functionality could be improved. Sharing the score and time to the specific puzzle would be nice.

    Also I came back to this thread to comment that this is the most engaging, fun, and satisfying word puzzle game I've maybe ever played. My only complaint is that there aren't more puzzles!

    Thanks for the fun :)

    by harrisi
  • Tutorial was great! And I would like the option to give up.
    by srdjanr
  • It’s basically Ribbit from Puzzmo, which is fine because reimplementations let you experiment with different gameplay.

    https://www.puzzmo.com

    by jasonpeacock
  • Came here to say this, Ribbit is a lot of fun, and Puzzmo in general is a really solid site.
    by abound