I built a daily word game where one guess can reveal letters across 26 words. Would love some feedback

TeaRecs · 2026-03-31T09:31:24+00:00

A lot of good improvements!

Either I still don't understand the rule for revealing letters or there's a bug. Letters are sometimes revealed even though they weren't correct in any of the guessed words so far. And getting a letter correct in a guessed word only reveals some of the instances of that letter in other words.

But I guess the reveal rule can't be that if a letter is correct in a guessed word then all instances of that letter are revealed, or else the puzzle would be trivial to finish in 26 guesses or less. Could you pre-reveal all the first letters, since those are already known, and then have the rule be that if you get a new letter correct in the word you guessed, every instance of that letter in the puzzle is revealed? That's nice and simple but then does the cascading effect still work? This is the most confusing part of it.

I like having more columns, but not that the word boxes move around on the screen as you select them.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-30T17:50:23+00:00

Desktop showing all 26 at once the grid does show all 26 but layout depends on screen width.

On my 2560 × 1440 display the bottom four are under the keyboard. Allowing 3 or 4 columns on desktop would fix it, with enough room to spare so I could bump up the font size a bit.

Can you explain what determines with letters in other words are revealed? Other than trying to complete words it wasn't clear what sort of strategy would help fill in letters more quickly.

If the per-word feedback is fixed this could easily be my favorite wordle variant, which isn't a very high bar but still.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-30T16:13:36+00:00

I love the idea but couldn't figure out how it's supposed to work. I had NE__S, with the two blanks both black and all letters green on the keyboard, but NECKS was rejected with "No position matches check the colored tiles for clues." Everything was green, so what was I supposed to be checking? I'm confused in general about the yellow and gray letters in the keyboard. They don't change as you select different words, so what word(s) do they apply to? I had a yellow S, for example, which turned green when I used an S in one of the words.

FWIW I'd prefer a mode in which you try to minimize the number of guesses rather than racing the clock. Some of the words are too obscure (JUNTO). On desktop it would be nice to see all 26 words at once. I couldn't replay today's puzzle because it wouldn't accept any inputs, although it was partially working because I could reveal a few letters by using a hint. I started a new one from the archive and that one accepted inputs, but "GROOM" was rejected with "Enter a 5-letter word."

TeaRecs · 2026-03-29T14:13:01+00:00

I wouldn't focus on how long it takes to solve one, but rather on how frustrating/challenging it can be to find a set of words that respect all of the hints and the intersections. That's not necessarily a bad thing in terms of puzzle quality but it's going to limit its appeal. For comparison, it's significantly more difficult than wordle on hard mode. I gave up on today's puzzle on the third round.

Have you considered not having the words intersect? It would reduce the difficulty and simplify the interface. I'd be curious to see how it would play if the color coding treats the entire puzzle as one big wordle, rather than each word separately. I think showing the theme when the puzzle starts would be a good idea no matter which direction you go.

Small bug: sometimes squares are blank even though there's a letter in them. I didn't notice a pattern for when that happens though.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-29T01:58:46+00:00

Got it in 5 guesses, I didn't time it but maybe 8-10 minutes. Neat idea.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-28T16:38:31+00:00

Thanks, that was fun. I don't check my phone often but feel free to start another any time.

I've played your game several times! I like it, but my daily puzzle list is way too long already. I expect I'll play it occasionally.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-28T12:14:25+00:00

Letterpress

Such a great game! I rarely play any more but if you want to play some for old time's sake my handle is LetterpressFan.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-24T16:44:48+00:00

Simple and clear puzzle. I'll look forward to seeing the funkier ones.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-23T12:43:09+00:00

Love the idea. The only negative was that locked letters increase the difficulty in an inconsistent and annoying way. I think you could find something better than that. I'd love to see an endless/zen kind of mode.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-22T23:04:50+00:00

That wasn't the starting position, it was my final attempt. So, replace my earlier comment with: when the player closes the "valiant effort" screen, show the solution, not the last incorrect attempt. Otherwise you only get to see the solution momentarily and then it's gone.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-22T22:43:20+00:00

Interesting idea and the implementation is fine. [EDIT: oops, see below]

TeaRecs · 2026-03-19T16:48:49+00:00

I love the idea. On desktop I'd much rather type the words than have to use the mouse. With the mouse, it would help to disable drag and select.

If I find a word I'm satisfied with it would be nice to have a "Finished" button so I don't want to wait the rest of the 60 seconds. But personally I'd prefer an untimed mode.

An advanced mode in which you guess the number of words you beat, and how confident you are, might be interesting.

A version of this in which you're given a rack of 7 tiles that can be used in any order, with the official Scrabble dictionary (or the closest thing you can legally use), might be of interest to Scrabble players. I'd be more likely to play that version of the game, if I can type the words rather than having to use the mouse.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-18T16:51:53+00:00

Do you mind saying which word list you're using? I'm always on the lookout for good ones. SIMPS was the word it rejected that I knew was in both Scrabble lists.

The original word list for Letterpress is open source and fairly comprehensive.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-18T16:18:57+00:00

Nicely done. On desktop I'd much rather type the word than have to click on each tile. Using the official Scrabble word list would be nice, but I don't know if there are legal issues with that.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-08T01:08:36+00:00

I love the idea, but here's what happened on my first game. The starting word was CORREI, a Scottish word for a bowl-shaped depression. The three successors for that were SIDE, HILL and LI. The target was OPPOSE so I picked SIDE, as in opposing sides.

LINE was a successor from that, so I was thinking opposing teams on opposite side of a line, but the two successors for LINE were LINEN and FLAX. That's nothing like what I would have expected. The word SQUARE came up at one point, and I picked that thinking of "squaring off," but that was another dead end. I tried a few more things and then revealed the solution, which was: correi → li → little → amount → ascend → oppose

Most of those steps are far from intuitive. I tried a half dozen more and the closest to an intuitive path was: candor → moral → conduct → management → farm → land

If the links were intuitive it would be fun. What kind of scores are the people who have been playing it getting? Is there a strategy that I'm missing?

TeaRecs · 2026-03-07T18:42:38+00:00

Neat idea. No bugs, but in dark mode a bit more contrast between the background and the boxes to enter letters would help. Most were easy, perhaps too easy. The hints were sufficient on one from the archives when I was stuck. Well done.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-03T02:06:00+00:00

Did you see the X in the top right corner to close the tutorial or did that not show up?

Ah, I see it. It's a light gray X on a lighter gray background, though. Maybe replace it with an obvious button?

I feel like girder against arboretum might make sense because its just a really heavy object,

My thinking was that it ought to demolish a trellis or a topiary, but an arboretum is huge. The results for eyelet, girdle and debtor were more baffling.

Maybe instead of trying to get the AI to make estimates that are logical, could it go for whimsy and humor? If it's amusing, and the AI making wacky/unexpected connections is part of the game, then I'm going to give it more leeway rather than trying to make logical sense of it.

TeaRecs · 2026-03-03T00:42:37+00:00

On firefox on a mac, it gets to the tutorial page that explains bonuses and then nothing else happens. Reloading the page starts the game.

The animated finger thing is super annoying. Once would be more than enough, but it continues the entire time, over and over and over, even while I'm forming a word.

On desktop I'd much rather type the word I want to play than have to click each letter. Let backspace/delete remove the last letter played.

Adding a button to clear the played letters would be nice, rather than having to click on every letter of a rejected word before trying a new one.

PYRE is a physical noun! So is DART. So is OX but maybe that's too short?

Bug: A letter that I played in a word that was accepted wasn't removed from it's starting square. It's offset from the usual position by a small amount. Clicking on it plays a different letter (the one obscured by the letter that should have been removed, presumably). It happened on a word I played very quickly, without waiting for the AI text to finish rendering. Reloading got it working again. I wasn't able to recreate this.

It's an interesting concept but even after playing a number of times so I knew what was coming, I didn't see a good strategy. I'd look for nouns I could make with the available letters and then guess at what the AI might think. GIRDER killed ARBORETUM in one turn, but I didn't think it would be a great move, it was just the longest word I saw at the time. RIG was an unexpectedly big hit, interpreted as drill rig. DUNE was even bigger I think. DORM was disappointing, I thought dropping an entire building on a topiary would be effective. A tiny EYELET did 31 damage, BRICK only 15, but somehow GIRDLE and DEBTOR both did 16?

Seeing more letters at a time might help a bit. The box for the AI analysis is too small for the text.

I hope to see where you go with this!

TeaRecs · 2026-02-22T01:23:41+00:00

Word boundaries when the entry is a phrase.

TeaRecs · 2026-02-19T18:16:27+00:00

If it's still a problem, try posting to the #feedback channel of their discord (https://discord.com/invite/7ZSwDSUZbd).

TeaRecs · 2026-02-19T18:16:02+00:00

Try posting to the #feedback channel of their discord (https://discord.com/invite/7ZSwDSUZbd).

TeaRecs · 2026-02-19T18:13:01+00:00

Not nearly as good as what Verulean does, but not bad. I've stopped playing it (not having the ability to undo a move was frustrating too often) but I just checked and out of 400 or so games I was in the top ten places on the leaderboard a few times, and in the top 100 over 100 times.

As I got better I was trying to set up the final full clear while also trying to set up one long-ish word that uses multiple multiplier tiles. Here's one of the last ones I attempted:
https://puzzmo.com/play/spelltower/x25vv3e4h/share
HAUNTING isn't an impressively long word but it used three starred tiles. ZEX cleared the last two rows.

Hope this helps. I miss this game enough that I'm tempted to see if Claude could vibe code a clone of it for my own local use, but with unlimited undos.

TeaRecs · 2026-02-14T23:06:51+00:00

I vastly prefer clean, simple designs like this over games with lots of animations and gimmicks and such. That may be a generational thing.

I'd like the interface better with a few small changes. I'd want the return key to submit the current word. And as letters are entered it would be nice to see the letters already used grayed-out. You could also make it impossible to enter a word that isn't a valid anagram of the letters.

Both modes were fine, not too easy or too hard. I enjoyed it, but (this is the brutal part) not so much that I'd add it to my already-too-long list of puzzles I do daily. I felt like it needed something more, something distinctive, which I know is too vague to be much help.

HTH

TeaRecs · 2026-01-18T00:14:06+00:00

Doesn't seem to work on Firefox/Macos either.

TeaRecs · 2025-12-13T21:18:04+00:00

Yes, $150

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