The timer makes it not enjoyable for me. It seems necessary to the game design and I’m not being negatively critical. Just sharing an additional perspective. I’ve been playing Zanagrams and the ability to hide the clock really improved my enjoyment of that game.
If I could magically get a feature by request, it would be to give me infinite time even if that meant my score came with an asterisk. Maybe just call it Relax Mode vs. Challenge Mode.
By the way: I really like the overall design of Zanagrams and 18 Words. These are small puzzle games with very simple, clean UIs. They work crisply and I've noticed you've been tidying up Zanagrams, adding minor features and settings. They have a very Classic Web feel to them. It's not like you're trying to get me to watch ads or subscribe to your newsletter or are just breadcrumbs to some for-profit thing. I like having a handful of very easy to pick up puzzles/toys when I need to fidget. They help keep me away from TikToks and Shorts.
Did you find a word that wasn't accepted you thought should be?
I do have another version where it accepts ANY word but I found it quite unsatisfying when I survived by randomly spamming combinations and finding a really obscure word.
So am currently running it against a 20,000 word wordlist instead of my larger 300,000 wordlist
This was harder than I thought it would be. It's pretty fun to play!
May I suggest displaying the final result and/or ongoing progress as 18 circles/shapes that fill up depending on how far you made it?
I lost on the third word because I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was, and then I restarted and got to the 18th. I'd look at the letters and just know which word it was, it was pretty odd how hard I found it the first time around versus how easy it was the second.
The timer makes it not enjoyable for me. It seems necessary to the game design and I’m not being negatively critical. Just sharing an additional perspective. I’ve been playing Zanagrams and the ability to hide the clock really improved my enjoyment of that game.
If I could magically get a feature by request, it would be to give me infinite time even if that meant my score came with an asterisk. Maybe just call it Relax Mode vs. Challenge Mode.
By the way: I really like the overall design of Zanagrams and 18 Words. These are small puzzle games with very simple, clean UIs. They work crisply and I've noticed you've been tidying up Zanagrams, adding minor features and settings. They have a very Classic Web feel to them. It's not like you're trying to get me to watch ads or subscribe to your newsletter or are just breadcrumbs to some for-profit thing. I like having a handful of very easy to pick up puzzles/toys when I need to fidget. They help keep me away from TikToks and Shorts.
I would appreciate the timer not turning red. It's better to be surprised that time's up, rather than be surprised to know it's running out.
100% agree. Casual mode would be a winner.
Yep, instead of feeling like a fun puzzle the timer just adds unnecessary pressure and gets me really annoyed.
My guy that’s the whole point of the game. Otherwise it’s too easy
You can still be competitive in "casual mode" using total time used to solve all the words.
Same. Stopped after two words. Gave me the same feeling as taking a timed software developer screening.
Would be nice to have a ‘scramble!’ button so it makes it slightly easier when we get stuck
Fun game though I wish it left more time for the longer words, also wish we could have the letters in one line and shuffle them
Pretty frustrating when you find a word, but it's not THE. Pretty fun otherwise.
tbh this should accept all dictionary matches
Did you find a word that wasn't accepted you thought should be?
I do have another version where it accepts ANY word but I found it quite unsatisfying when I survived by randomly spamming combinations and finding a really obscure word.
So am currently running it against a 20,000 word wordlist instead of my larger 300,000 wordlist
The third one in the archive wouldn't accept "tase" or "sate" for "seat".
300,000? The Oxford dictionary only contains 171,000!
I guess the wordlist with 300k contains all the different forms a word can have while the 171k count is only the base words.
Haha yeah the 300k list contains so really obscure stuff
Going two days back in the archive, "egret" not allowed
"braze" is a very common word, especially if you like bicycles.
Definitely not any less valid or unsatisfying than "zebra".
Could I have the source code so I can plug in the Polish word list? It would make a great training app for Scrabble.
You could also probably one-shot your own version of this using any SOTA LLM, it's not terribly complicated (but a nice game idea!).
Yeah its just the single index.html file feel free to download it and adapt
I didn’t realize the word “crowd“ only had one vowel until I saw it scrambled!
And I didn't realize "audio" had only one consonant!
This was harder than I thought it would be. It's pretty fun to play! May I suggest displaying the final result and/or ongoing progress as 18 circles/shapes that fill up depending on how far you made it?
Made it to 9 and then time ran out... I wish it showed me the word that I got stuck on! Argh!!!
LAMER is a real word and COLOR is not.
Fun, that's it. New addiction after daily wordle unlocked
Something about not being able to shuffle the tiles makes this hard for me.
Fun! But disappointing if you lose early. Maybe let the player continue after failing and showing a final score out of 18.
Embarrassed of where I failed (#8). Very cool game though!
If it makes you feel better, I failed on #3. In my defense, I'm running on 2 hours of sleep.
Pretty cool idea. I think a calendar based UI to go through the archives would be more user friendly than what you have right now.
Yeah for sure I agree just kept it simple for now but will improve if people like it
iPhone bug: double tapping on a letter zooms in the viewport with no way to zoom back out, permanently breaking the page.
Oof yeah thanks! Fixed now
Fun game!
I got stuck on the word corner of all words. Ugh
This is fun! Could use a short "how it works" blurb on the landing page though :)
Thanks! I thought it was fun to throw people straight into the game without instructions but you think it too unclear?
I did get the first one straight away, so it's not too unclear, but it did induce a short moment of panic, which I'm not sure I'd categorise as fun :P
Damn got to 13.
Ha fun little game :)
great game, what do you think of adding shuffle?
what made you go with 18?
14 was taken.
I lost on the third word because I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was, and then I restarted and got to the 18th. I'd look at the letters and just know which word it was, it was pretty odd how hard I found it the first time around versus how easy it was the second.
I'm normally terrible at anagrams.