Show HN: One More Letter

(playonemoreletter.com)

58 points | by hmate9 6 hours ago ago

34 comments

  • wrs 5 hours ago

    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!)

    • rokob 2 hours ago

      None of those are French words. How many letters is the word you say is French?

    • jimbob45 4 hours ago

      Felt the same way. Failed the last three like that with legitimate words.

  • propter_hoc 4 hours ago

    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.

    • iambenm 11 minutes ago

      Spoiler alert, it seems to be like Wordle in that the same puzzle is given to everyone for that day.

    • ryhanshannon 3 hours ago

      Same thing here happened with 'irks' and 'risk'

    • shshsjsj 3 hours ago

      wtf is kiters?

      • what 3 hours ago

        People flying kites?

      • luipugs 3 hours ago

        kiters = kiteboarders. Welcome to Australia, the country where the words are made up and meanings don't matter.

  • coldcache 2 hours ago

    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).

  • ethanpil 5 hours ago

    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.

    • paularmstrong 4 hours ago

      Also some instructions. I had no idea what I was supposed to do at first.

    • BrenBarn 4 hours ago

      Yeah this happened to me too. A timer with auto-start is a bad combination.

  • jayzer01 an hour ago

    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.

  • thrtythreeforty 5 hours ago

    It reminds me of Wordflower. I like this! With one caveat:

    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 out of 5. 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").

    • thrtythreeforty 5 hours ago

      More feedback:

      - 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.

      • invictati 18 minutes ago

        It's pretty clear that they're leaving the time limit in because it attracts engagement in the form of comments like yours.

  • scubbo 2 hours ago

    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)

  • fabioricardo7 5 hours ago

    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.

  • jadenzaleski 3 hours ago

    Unlike everyone else here, I enjoyed this. A good hit for the day, see you tmrw

  • RickS 5 hours ago

    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.

    • jihadjihad 5 hours ago

      I’d vote shuffle with space bar.

  • rubinlinux 5 hours ago

    Reminds me a little of contact (https://www.ludozofi.com/home/games/contact/)

  • gfat 4 hours ago

    The staggered entry animation of the letters on page load is lovely. The typing also felt rewarding.

    Bit of feedback, should the timer pause when reading the how to play or opening settings?

  • baking 2 hours ago

    All I get is this: "Today's run is over."

  • BrenBarn 4 hours ago

    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.

  • waylandsmithers 3 hours ago

    Hey this is a great game. Nice work

  • museshare 2 hours ago

    This is a spiritual descendant of Wordle, cool idea!

  • jagged-chisel 4 hours ago

    "Today's run is over"

    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')

    • ventana 2 hours ago

      My reaction too, but then I found the button to try the previous days, and it was enough for me to figure out the game :)

    • joshuat 3 hours ago

      Coupled with the immediate timer start, no instructions. Meh.

  • _dragonguy 2 hours ago

    Very fun!!

  • badc0ffee 2 hours ago

    MARC? MARCEL? Come on