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.
Having a timer is maybe not so much the problem, but there's no reward here for doing early words quickly and no appreciation for the fact that difficulty is not linear. Would be nice if you could bank up some time for when harder ones come.
I think Zach Gage (developer of excellent games including Really Bad Chess, Spelltower, etc) says on Adam Conover's podcast that for many people they have difficulty improving at a skill when they have time (or other) pressure
Thus, he always includes a relaxed mode to let someone practice without any stress. Incidentally, he realized that some people only ever play in the relaxed mode!
Maybe if it counted up I would be less annoyed by it. I like how the NYT does it with their crossword app. If you complete it under some threshold you get a gold star but here's no upper limit on the time.
Yea, the timer is a little stressful though I understand the purpose/design behind it. I do like the suggestion of the no timer or a relaxed mode with.
PS anyone have any other fun, simple games like this and Zanagrams? I found https://maptap.gg/ recently and that also gives me the same Classic Web feeling that OP mentioned.
Not everyone plays games for purposeless dumb challenges and difficulty. Games are supposed to be fun. Sometimes you just want to chill and engage the brain at a leisurely pace.
Yeah I think this will be a bit too easy without a timer. But that ui does make it kind of intense, i forgot how to spell a basic word because i was thinking i only have 10 red seconds left
I like the idea, but I didn't like losing after a few words. Now it might just be me not being good at losing, but who is?
Maybe the game can always progress to the next word with your total score being reduced. So if you get all within 30 seconds you score 18/18. That way everyone can play the whole game and share with their friends how far they got:
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
Did you find a word that wasn't accepted you thought should be?
EARLS was not accepted, and I had already decided not to try REALS. (is there a rule against plurals?) what it was looking for was LASER which has a more tenuous claim on being a word than those two.
I can understand the clock running out meaning a loss - but I still want to play the rest of the words? how do I do that? I don't think they are accessible anymore
Clear your cookies for the site or open incognito mode. But I agree there's no reason not to let people continue and just mark where they ended "legitimately".
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.
Having a timer is maybe not so much the problem, but there's no reward here for doing early words quickly and no appreciation for the fact that difficulty is not linear. Would be nice if you could bank up some time for when harder ones come.
I think Zach Gage (developer of excellent games including Really Bad Chess, Spelltower, etc) says on Adam Conover's podcast that for many people they have difficulty improving at a skill when they have time (or other) pressure
Thus, he always includes a relaxed mode to let someone practice without any stress. Incidentally, he realized that some people only ever play in the relaxed mode!
The timer kills this for me too.
Maybe if it counted up I would be less annoyed by it. I like how the NYT does it with their crossword app. If you complete it under some threshold you get a gold star but here's no upper limit on the time.
Yea, the timer is a little stressful though I understand the purpose/design behind it. I do like the suggestion of the no timer or a relaxed mode with.
PS anyone have any other fun, simple games like this and Zanagrams? I found https://maptap.gg/ recently and that also gives me the same Classic Web feeling that OP mentioned.
Yeah screw the timer. I can't work under pressure like that when it comes to word games. Maybe other people will enjoy that, but not me.
100% agree. Casual mode would be a winner.
English is not my native tongue. If I had a relaxed mode, that'd be awesome :)
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.
Not everyone plays games for purposeless dumb challenges and difficulty. Games are supposed to be fun. Sometimes you just want to chill and engage the brain at a leisurely pace.
Yeah. It's just a walk to the mailbox for my brain.
Same. Stopped after two words. Gave me the same feeling as taking a timed software developer screening.
> it would be to give me infinite time even if that meant my score came with an asterisk.
Or maybe don’t even keep score. That’s one of the features which makes be skip these daily games. Not every game needs to be a competition!
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.
Yeah I think this will be a bit too easy without a timer. But that ui does make it kind of intense, i forgot how to spell a basic word because i was thinking i only have 10 red seconds left
Would be nice to have a ‘scramble!’ button so it makes it slightly easier when we get stuck
I like the idea, but I didn't like losing after a few words. Now it might just be me not being good at losing, but who is?
Maybe the game can always progress to the next word with your total score being reduced. So if you get all within 30 seconds you score 18/18. That way everyone can play the whole game and share with their friends how far they got:
|X|o|X|X|X|o|o|o|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|X|o|X| 13/18
Pretty frustrating when you find a word, but it's not THE word. 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
Did you find a word that wasn't accepted you thought should be?
EARLS was not accepted, and I had already decided not to try REALS. (is there a rule against plurals?) what it was looking for was LASER which has a more tenuous claim on being a word than those two.
The third one in the archive wouldn't accept "tase" or "sate" for "seat".
"braze" is a very common word, especially if you like bicycles.
Definitely not any less valid or unsatisfying than "zebra".
Ok yes all good examples. Have reverted back ot the large dictionary for now which accepts all these
Going two days back in the archive, "egret" not allowed
quite/quiet
Why not just only allow a single try, but accept any "real" word?
Interesting idea but too many people mistype / mispell on first attempt (mostly me)
the obvious solution is to not use the words that have an obscure word as anagram. I failed on 'target' because I went for 'regatta'.
> I failed on ‘target’ because I went for ‘regatta’.
Given that those two don’t have the same letters, isn’t that the expected outcome?
That seems only fair. ;-)
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
I can understand the clock running out meaning a loss - but I still want to play the rest of the words? how do I do that? I don't think they are accessible anymore
A continue that let's you keep playing would be fun. Or maybe different modes (eg hard vs normal)
Clear your cookies for the site or open incognito mode. But I agree there's no reason not to let people continue and just mark where they ended "legitimately".
I like the time based ness. 30 seconds is plenty of time and one run a day is a nice change of pace from never ending feeds.
Good job, I got 15/18
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
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 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!
When I didn't know the word I just mashed the given letters on the keyboard randomly, sometimes I got lucky with it
Maybe the game should limit the number of tries per word?
This could be a cool captcha challenge (without the timer).
That's not how captchas work...
Could I have the source code so I can plug in the Polish word list? It would make a great training app for Scrabble.
Yeah its just the single index.html file feel free to download it and adapt
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!).
Just one shot in Claude if you have it or deepseek flash for free.
Made it to 9 and then time ran out... I wish it showed me the word that I got stuck on! Argh!!!
It should have shown you!
Fun! But disappointing if you lose early. Maybe let the player continue after failing and showing a final score out of 18.
Great game, well done
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
Something about not being able to shuffle the tiles makes this hard for me.
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, that's it. New addiction after daily wordle unlocked
Nice, this is pretty fun!
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.
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
great game, what do you think of adding shuffle?
Ha fun little game :)
Damn got to 13.
Fun game!
I got stuck on the word corner of all words. Ugh
LAMER is a real word and COLOR is not.
Depends on which side of the pond (or Canadian border?) you're on ;)
> COLOR is not
Huh? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/color
what made you go with 18?
Not the parent, but I just checked and it seems that all $iwords.com are taken for i<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.