Solo project. I'm a .NET developer doing some new work but mainly maintaining legacy sites so this was my excuse to play with the Cloudflare stack (Pages, Workers, D1, KV).
The game: get from a start word to a target word in as few hops as possible e.g. COLD → HOT (antonym) → SPOT (rhyme) → PLACE (synonym) → PLAICE (rhyme). Each hop must be a rhyme, synonym or antonym of the previous word. All the puzzles are human created (mainly by my wife!) so there is at least one route that works. I tried creating from scripts that daisy-chained words but the results were just not fun for some reason.
The main problem turned out to be validation. I hugely underestimated this! The validation stack ended up as:
blocklist (offensive words), already-used check, stored-path check, connections payload, human-approved matches from previous games (we queue all of these to audit), WordNet subset, ConceptNet subset, extra-pairs, lemma exceptions, hypernyms, troponyms, non-rhotic rhymes. If no match found after all those client side checks we hit some APIs (Datamuse and RhymeBrain in both directions). If all else fails lemma suffix-strip, prefix-antonym check and a local rhyme check. Despite those checks there are some obvious connections that still get rejected but hopefully enough accepted ones that the player does not give up. I was quite pleased with the share dynamic; the recipient will be presented with a challenge where their result will be compared with yours at the end.
It's free, no signup, no ads. Honest feedback would be great and anything constructive even better.
The reason is to make the game challenging so that players can come up with unique words. There is also words played dict which lets you see all the words you have played thus far
Very slick to play. I like the auto spell check which simplifies the validation. A good level of challenge where it didn't get frustrating. Personally I don't mind but other people might like a bit more visual pizzazz even if that's just some colour on the main grid etc
I enjoyed it. Not sure what happens if you put an answer in wrong, does it validate as you go? The dynamic was satisfying in that it gets easier as you go.
— Jul 21
My score: 1000
16/16 correct in 3:44
0 mistakes
Nice! Yes if you place one incorrectly you get a strike and lose a point. 3 strikes and you’re out (or you have the option to watch an ad for 3 more lives)
Good concept. What's the incentive to not guess on the first clue. The clue is not cryptic on the one I tried so there is luck involved in hitting the target? I'm wondering if I played every day I would always guess the first then immediately have 3 clues which would narrow it down sufficiently to get it right? Or I never guess the first one and wait for the second to always have two clues?
Well, it really comes down to how confident you feel about the first clue. Some folks really like to optimize the amount of points they're getting and what their average is...so if they really don't know it and guess wrong then the max they can get that day is 3 points. Versus a 4 which could help their overall average. If you're only looking at it from the perspective of a streak and guessing something, then it really doesn't make a difference.
It's a good idea. Executed well. I would say for adults it's a little easy but I think perfect for 9 years up to adult. Would be nice to be able to admire the puzzle at the end and look at stats etc
The main problem turned out to be validation. I hugely underestimated this! The validation stack ended up as: blocklist (offensive words), already-used check, stored-path check, connections payload, human-approved matches from previous games (we queue all of these to audit), WordNet subset, ConceptNet subset, extra-pairs, lemma exceptions, hypernyms, troponyms, non-rhotic rhymes. If no match found after all those client side checks we hit some APIs (Datamuse and RhymeBrain in both directions). If all else fails lemma suffix-strip, prefix-antonym check and a local rhyme check. Despite those checks there are some obvious connections that still get rejected but hopefully enough accepted ones that the player does not give up. I was quite pleased with the share dynamic; the recipient will be presented with a challenge where their result will be compared with yours at the end.
It's free, no signup, no ads. Honest feedback would be great and anything constructive even better.