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- Hacker News
- How is "Fillmore" a word, but "filmer" isn't? Similarly, so is Levitt, and apparently Illinois.by pavel_lishin
- Good point, I've removed all the proper nouns now.by johnchinjew
- A word got denied with the error "Word was already used". I had in fact not used it already, neither had any of the others. That caused me to lose the game, very unsatisfying. (nice game otherwise)by trapture
- I think I know what went wrong. Right now, even unscored words are not allowed to be reused. Will post a quick fix. Thanks for the precise bug report!by johnchinjew
- This seems like a fun way to practice English vocabulary. One thing confused me, though — I thought the goal was to make the longest word using all of the given letters, but it looks like you can also compete with words that don’t use every letter. Is that intentional?by ethannam9022
- I'd also like to expand it to work with other alphabetic languages too.by johnchinjew
- Yes, it's intentional to allow words that don't use all the letters. It can be very tricky to think of a panagram every time (word that has all 7 letters used at least once). Hence, we don't require every submission to be a panagram. I'll work on making the instructions clearer!
There is a bit of an interesting related sharp edge here. Sometimes the longest word for a given set of letters actually does NOT use all the letters! I've thought of a number of approaches to address this tension, but, opted to keep scoring dead simple in the end. I may experiment in the future on this topic though.
by johnchinjew - Simple and easy to play.
I usually play the Countdown variant, where a letter cannot be re-used. But it starts with 9 letters and one can have multiple instances of the same letter in the starting set.
It would be fun if you could implement this, as well. An initial switch might determine what rules are in effect.
by zvr - Sorry folks, something broke! Looking into it and will post here with updates.
UPDATE #2: Seeing full recovery now (Aug 9, 10 PM PST).
UPDATE #1: Looks like Railway is having problems - https://status.railway.com/incident/RL8FRJE6
by johnchinjew - Fun game. Would be nice if there was a single player mode that simply prints the letters and at the end shows the longest word that was missed. That way you can play it offline and place a phone in the center of the table and people can play around it with pen and paper or by just thinking of the word and everyone announces at the end.by scronkfinkle
- Thanks for checking it out! A single-player/offline mode does sound fun too. I do think I will end up adding support for a number of variations and modes.by johnchinjew
- Nice job. But wouldn't accept tnetennba [1]. :)
Seriously though reminds me of the game "Countdown" in the series IT Crowd where they compete to find the longest word in a random assortment of vowels and consonants.
by vunderba - Countdown is an actual UK game show, on air since 1982 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_(game_show).
It was originally a French game show (Des chiffres et des lettres), it has been adapted in many countries, and in the UK has spawn off the comedy show "8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown".
by zvr - Idea: it would be more interesting/competitive if you could immediately see others' submissions, and if those words were then "taken" and can't be reused.
Currently you're just kind of twiddling your thumbs after you submit and run out of ideas.
It was also not immediately obvious to me that you can submit multiple words, so I was wasting time entering and deleting attempts before finally submitting the best one.
Finally, instead of fixed timers between rounds, you might want to have a "Ready!" or "Go!" button.
- Really great points, thanks for commenting.
One nuance: if you show others' submissions right away, the game turns into a "race" where speed matters a lot more. That could be fun too (a different game mode?). I might think about showing something like "Opponent X found A _ _ _ _" or "Opponent X found a 5 letter word".
by johnchinjew - I’m assuming the (duck emoji) is the bot for when no one else in the lobby? Glad you included that. However, I’m not sure why “niggas” is one of the words it uses… Moderating users is one thing but I would hope at least the bot could be inoffensive…
- Sorry. Fixed that now!by johnchinjew
- Hey all! I've added a number of features this past week. Tell me what you think.
1. You can now react with emojis at the end of every round.
2. Someone found a great word? You can now double-tap to give them a like.
3. You can now see the first letter of the "word to beat" in real time.
Other improvements: Added a more detailed "How to play?". Addressed the profanity issues. Improved the word list quality. Fixed unexpected "Word already used" errors.
by johnchinjew - Nice!
Needs a chat space to say "gg" at the end. It could even be just a button that does just that, if you're worried about unmoderated chat. Competitive games feel unfinished without it!
I was in second place for the first three rounds and then swept to the front on the last round.
by SamBam - Adding chat is a good idea, thanks for the input. Thanks for checking it out!by johnchinjew
- OP will probably want to replay events to make it seem real time when there aren't enough people to pair with. So a real time chat might not work.by brikym
- This is a lot of fun! I'm pleased that I was able to defeat "hitler1488", but you may want to add some content filtering for the name choosing step.
- Good idea. And thanks for checking it out!by johnchinjew