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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
100% agree. Casual mode would be a winner.
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.
Would be nice to have a ‘scramble!’ button so it makes it slightly easier when we get stuck
This could be a cool captcha challenge (without the timer).
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
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
Great game, well done
When I didn't know the word I just mashed the given letters on the keyboard randomly, sometimes I got lucky with it
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
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
The third one in the archive wouldn't accept "tase" or "sate" for "seat".
quite/quiet
"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
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. ;-)
Going two days back in the archive, "egret" not allowed
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 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!
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
Just one shot in Claude if you have it or deepseek flash for free.
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!).
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?
Nice, this is pretty fun!
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!
Something about not being able to shuffle the tiles makes this hard for me.
Fun, that's it. New addiction after daily wordle unlocked
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
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
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.
Fun! But disappointing if you lose early. Maybe let the player continue after failing and showing a final score out of 18.
great game, what do you think of adding shuffle?
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
Fun game!
I got stuck on the word corner of all words. Ugh
LAMER is a real word and COLOR is not.
Ha fun little game :)
Damn got to 13.
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.
[flagged]
Skill issue
haha yes. I got 2 and it said come back in 9hours. LOL. Ain't nobody got time for that.
lol