Show HN: One More Letter

(playonemoreletter.com)

83 points | by hmate9 1 day ago

34 comments

  • wrs 23 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!)
    • nsvd2 12 hours ago
      It won't let you use the same letters in the same order again (e.g. LEASE -> LEASED). I think that's fair.
      • zbikowski 11 hours ago
        I agree that this would be fair, but it seemingly not true. "SEA" disallows "SEAL" on the next turn (correct answer ALES,) but then you are suddenly allowed to use "SEALED" later - because of my assumption of the rule, I didn't get this stage until the clue. Same with "LEASE" and "LEADERS," which are both allowed to use "LEA."

        So it seems as though the rule is, you must mix up the letters for the following answer, but further answers are fair game to reuse letter combinations (or, it is applied arbitrarily.) Neither are very intuitive IMO.

      • wrs 4 hours ago
        OK yeah, that does sound fine once you say it, but since the only stated rule is “one more letter”, I don’t think it’s obvious enough.
    • rokob 20 hours ago
      None of those are French words. How many letters is the word you say is French?
      • wrs 4 hours ago
        Four
    • jimbob45 22 hours ago
      Felt the same way. Failed the last three like that with legitimate words.
  • propter_hoc 22 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.
    • ryhanshannon 21 hours ago
      Same thing here happened with 'irks' and 'risk'
    • iambenm 18 hours ago
      Spoiler alert, it seems to be like Wordle in that the same puzzle is given to everyone for that day.
    • shshsjsj 21 hours ago
      wtf is kiters?
      • luipugs 21 hours ago
        kiters = kiteboarders. Welcome to Australia, the country where the words are made up and meanings don't matter.
        • saghm 18 hours ago
          All words are made up
          • fjlunky 13 hours ago
            That’s what luipugs said.

            An interesting twist on this game might be that spelling is enforced to be non-standard. Here are letters, here’s the meaning, make the word but it must not be spelt right.

            • saghm 8 hours ago
              No, they said that in Australia words are made up. I'm not disagreeing, but I'm saying that it's not specific to Australia!

              Tangentially, it's funny to me that you happen to use "spelt" here; I've always felt that it doesn't look like a "real" word and choose to use "spelled" instead, but I also recognize that this is entirely my own personal thing and not reflective of anything other than my own issues. It's a great example to me though of how trying to push personal feelings about words against a wider consensus mostly just leads to frustration without any real gains, so it's less frustrating in the long to be able to live with the fact that they won't always match up.

              Language is weird and wonderful and despite often being inconsistent and sometimes outright annoying, it's also extremely powerful, and it works well maybe because of the resiliency it needs to withstand the very real limitations it has, and I choose to embrace it all and enjoy it! (I also suspect is why I enjoy puns way more than average; to quote one of my former coworkers, "words are toys")

      • what 21 hours ago
        People flying kites?
  • ethanpil 23 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 22 hours ago
      Also some instructions. I had no idea what I was supposed to do at first.
    • BrenBarn 23 hours ago
      Yeah this happened to me too. A timer with auto-start is a bad combination.
  • lost-theory 18 hours ago
    Pretty fun. But I saw this issue come up on multiple days: Letters were AIERNGT for the final word of day #2. I tried INGRATE. Didn't work. Then I tried TEARING. That worked. But then on the win screen, it said GRANITE. Huh...
  • coldcache 20 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).
  • mmclar 12 hours ago
    Please don't give me a hint if I didn't ask for it! Maybe make a hint button that becomes enabled at a certain time.
  • thrtythreeforty 23 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 23 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 hours ago
        It's pretty clear that they're leaving the time limit in because it attracts engagement in the form of comments like yours.
  • takencoder 5 hours ago
    This is a fantastic little word game. The staggered entry animation and the typing UX are incredibly polished.
  • nmenon10 17 hours ago
    I liked playing the game! A few things that worked well for me - a gradual ladder meant I knew word length was going to increase by 1 and was prepared mentally, the timer was not in my face distracting me as I tried thinking, the clue comes around the 25s mark to help me get unstuck. What didn't work for me was valid words not being accepted, leaving you a little demoralized. I see a lot of suggestions already around this and I don't have anything more specific to add to that.

    But overall, this was fun!

  • fabioricardo7 1 day 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.
  • jayzer01 19 hours 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.
  • damienmeur 10 hours ago
    Very cool, little improvements: the hint I got contained the ethymological "root" of the word to find. Might be better to make the hint never leak too much on the word itself
  • RickS 23 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 23 hours ago
      I’d vote shuffle with space bar.
  • scubbo 20 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)

  • elsig60 4 hours ago
    Interesting. how did you build it?
  • dash2 18 hours ago
    A game rather like this is described in Gwen Raverat’s Edwardian memoir, Period Piece. There you have to keep finding new words one letter longer, and they get ridiculous combos like TRUMPET, STRUMPET, (thou) TRUMPETST, STRUMPETST…
  • hmate9 15 hours ago
    Thank you guys for the feedback. I'll fix valid words being rejected, having space as a keyboard shortcut for shuffle, and maybe a "zen" mode without a timer.
  • jbrooksuk 15 hours ago
    I enjoyed this. I’d like unexpected word points but this is nice.

    One More Letter #7

    5/5 words · 1:34

    https://playonemoreletter.com

  • jameswhitford 15 hours ago
    Awesome game! A potential UX update: if you fail a guess, the letters go back down below in the same configuration as your guess.

    But others might disagree!

  • jadenzaleski 21 hours ago
    Unlike everyone else here, I enjoyed this. A good hit for the day, see you tmrw
  • AlexSmith26 16 hours ago
    Funny. I type and pass two words. When I see S E E A L, I can't find the right combination. So what's the purpose of this web?
  • rubinlinux 23 hours ago
    Reminds me a little of contact (https://www.ludozofi.com/home/games/contact/)
  • gfat 23 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?

  • konsalexee 16 hours ago
    Super fun game! When are you gonna sell this to NYT games to play alongside with world daily? lol
  • baking 20 hours ago
    All I get is this: "Today's run is over."
  • ryanisnan 17 hours ago
    Fun, but I don't like trivia.
  • waylandsmithers 21 hours ago
    Hey this is a great game. Nice work
  • BrenBarn 22 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.
  • museshare 21 hours ago
    This is a spiritual descendant of Wordle, cool idea!
  • jagged-chisel 22 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 20 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 22 hours ago
      Coupled with the immediate timer start, no instructions. Meh.
    • shshsjsj 21 hours ago
      [flagged]
  • _dragonguy 21 hours ago
    Very fun!!
  • badc0ffee 21 hours ago
    MARC? MARCEL? Come on
  • d--b 17 hours ago
    It’s annoying that DEALERS doesnt work when the answer is LEADERS
  • barrbagli 13 hours ago
    [dead]