Show HN: One More Letter

76 pointsposted 12 hours ago
by hmate9

48 Comments

wrs

12 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

an hour ago

It won't let you use the same letters in the same order again (e.g. LEASE -> LEASED). I think that's fair.

rokob

9 hours ago

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

jimbob45

11 hours ago

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

propter_hoc

10 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

10 hours ago

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

iambenm

7 hours ago

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

shshsjsj

10 hours ago

wtf is kiters?

what

10 hours ago

People flying kites?

luipugs

10 hours ago

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

saghm

6 hours ago

All words are made up

fjlunky

2 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.

ethanpil

12 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

11 hours ago

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

BrenBarn

11 hours ago

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

lost-theory

6 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...

mmclar

an hour 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.

coldcache

9 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).

nmenon10

6 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!

thrtythreeforty

11 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

11 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

7 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.

hmate9

4 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.

jameswhitford

3 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!

jayzer01

8 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.

scubbo

9 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)

dash2

7 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…

RickS

12 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

12 hours ago

I’d vote shuffle with space bar.

konsalexee

5 hours ago

Super fun game! When are you gonna sell this to NYT games to play alongside with world daily? lol

jadenzaleski

9 hours ago

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

gfat

11 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?

AlexSmith26

5 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?

ryanisnan

6 hours ago

Fun, but I don't like trivia.

baking

9 hours ago

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

BrenBarn

11 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

9 hours ago

This is a spiritual descendant of Wordle, cool idea!

jagged-chisel

10 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

9 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

10 hours ago

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

d--b

6 hours ago

It’s annoying that DEALERS doesnt work when the answer is LEADERS