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Show HN: Wordit – Change One Letter, Keep the Chain Going

35 points by atum47 ago | 24 comments

Hi everyone,

I got this idea for a game where, starting from a four letter word you need to go as deep as you can in your vocabulary, changing only one letter per word.

bear -> beer -> peer...

Each correct word gives you 1 point

Each incorrect word takes one life away from you, you start with 3

tty456 |next [-]

Love the concept! Although found it a bit leading of easy answers once I landed on a word where changing the first letter yielded many new words (i.e. word like 'time' yielded many new *ime words, or plural words if ending in an s). Felt repetitive after a while. Perhaps a Hard mode where the next changed letter must be a different position?

quuxplusone |root |parent |next [-]

+1. It felt very mechanical running through "bard, card, hard, lard, nard, pard, sard, ward, ware, care, dare, fare, hare, mare, nare, pare, tare, bare, bark, dark, hark, lark, mark, nark, park, sark,..." Definitely feels like something a computer could do better than a human. (And the leaderboard confirms it.)

But switching the traversal order to "bard, bare, care, card, hard, hare, dare, dark, hark, hart, cart,..." doesn't seem to make it any more fun.

My suggestion would be to add an "enemy AI" following its own trajectory toward you; your job then is not just to walk around as long as possible, but to stay at least one step ahead of the enemy for a long as possible.

The enemy might not move just one step per turn; it might do something like "stand still for 3 turns, then change 2 letters in a single turn."

Showing the enemy's words to the player would also increase the "discoverability" of paths in the game. The player could say "Oh, apparently NARD is a valid word! I'll remember that for next time."

atum47 |root |parent |previous [-]

thanks, the whole thing were prototyped in a day or so. I was thinking about ways to make it more challenging, maybe using 5 letters word, 6... messing with how many edits you get.

I was going under surgery on the day I released this, cause it was my first time going under general anesthesia and i was freaking out. it was a rush against the time to release as is. now that I'm recovering i'll work on it some more.

thanks for the feed back

saulpw |next |previous [-]

I played Poople for a few months, same concept but with an actual goal achievable in a few minutes.

https://poople.com/

vova_hn2 |next |previous [-]

I wish it would show the whole chain in the end, perhaps augmented with dictionary meanings or links to Wiktionary.

atum47 |root |parent [-]

that can be done

asimovDev |next |previous [-]

Is 'ment' a word? I had 'went' and wrote 'ment' on a whim and it accepted it and I was quite surprised.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ment

according to Merriam-Webster it's only a suffix

LearnYouALisp |root |parent [-]

Oxford (an "exhaustive" dictionary) has several transitive verbs:

https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=ment

shwetarkadam257 |next |previous [-]

Reminds me of wordle , fun concept!

uberex |next |previous [-]

This sort of thing was a favourite in puzzle books except you had to get to the end word.

Fun play!

I soon realized get to a nice word where the first letter can be replaced alot like "buck".

atum47 |root |parent [-]

After the initial prototype, I was playing to see if the game was fun, I realized that from time to time you can get a whole new word by changing one letter. I'm glad you liked it

tim-projects |next |previous [-]

LARP wasn't in the dictionary. I feel cheated.

atum47 |root |parent [-]

don't blame me, I used the biggest dictionary I could find

omeysalvi |next |previous [-]

Nice very entertaining

nosioptar |next |previous [-]

The keyboard control on mobile is tedious. Have to tap in letter box to get keyboard, keyboard disappears after entering letter, have to repeat for each letter. It'd be a huge improvement to let me type all four letters without exiling my keyboard to mordor.

atum47 |root |parent [-]

You're not supposed to type more than one letter. You click the box you want to edit, type the letter you want to change and click check.

shmeeed |root |parent |next [-]

FF on Android: my keyboard doesn't auti-hide and covers the check button, I need to hide it manually each time.

nosioptar |root |parent |previous [-]

Oh, that makes more sense.

mgianluc |next |previous [-]

love it

atum47 |root |parent [-]

thank you

naikrovek |next |previous [-]

“bapt” was my starting word.

I was doomed to fail. “bapt” are you kidding?

rothos |root |parent [-]

rapt, rape, rare, dare, ...

naikrovek |root |parent [-]

"rapt" dammit. oh well. me and words are not on friendly terms. never have been.

quuxplusone |root |parent [-]

Or bait (or probably baht or batt).

raullu |next |previous [-]

[flagged]

vladsiu |next |previous [-]

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JDK111 |previous [-]

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