Show HN: 18 Words

Just a vote since I'm seeing a lot of anti-timer sentiment: I like the timer because it creates a conclusive way for the game to end, and causes me to spend a lot less time on the game, I imagine. But I also think it makes sense to have a non-timer mode. It would also be cool to have like 3 shuffles that you are allowed to use. As an exit to the non-timer mode, I think it would be fine to have an "I give up " button.

I’d prefer a timer, but when it runs out of time, you just don’t get credit for the word.

You click next and it goes to the next word.

I don’t want hints but I can see how others might want that. But you still don’t get credit for hints. Or it shows “x hints used”

Final score can show that you got the first N words in <30s (as it is now), and you can have other stats:

* Total number of consecutive words (even if over time)

* Total number of words

* total words <30 seconds

* Plus whatever hint based metrics you want

If you're not set on a "survival mode" design, could you design it as counting up instead of counting down? And maybe showing a "par" time, that way players can opt into the challenge vs. just a morning brainteaser.

Someone replied with "survival mode" which is a great way to phrase it.

Maybe a few different modes? How many can you get out of 18, how long can you last (unlimited), and just a chilled relaxed mode.

Complete gut reaction to your first question, my preference would be two fold: 1. An option to start the game in timeless mode 2. When I fail a word, prior to showing me the word, give me the option to enter timeless mode for the rest of the run, such that it doesn't ruin the current round, and that run is now excluded

As for the second, that's more suggestive and I don't care as much either way. Personally me for me I've just been going down the archive trying each day. I enjoy competitive games, so once I miss a word I don't have much interest in continuing on.

1. I'd prefer to reveal letters ... each press of the hint button reveals the position of one random letter.

2. I don't have a preference.

Very cool and well done.

Those are all good options.

Also a version in which your unused time is accumulated for future rounds would be interesting

I think Zach Gage (developer of excellent games including Really Bad Chess, Spelltower, etc) says on Adam Conover's podcast that for many people they have difficulty improving at a skill when they have time (or other) pressure

Thus, he always includes a relaxed mode to let someone practice without any stress. Incidentally, he realized that some people only ever play in the relaxed mode!

The timer kills this for me too.

Maybe if it counted up I would be less annoyed by it. I like how the NYT does it with their crossword app. If you complete it under some threshold you get a gold star but there's no upper limit on the time.

Having a timer is maybe not so much the problem, but there's no reward here for doing early words quickly and no appreciation for the fact that difficulty is not linear. Would be nice if you could bank up some time for when harder ones come.

I'd probably say there instead of a Challenge Mode and a Relax Mode like you said, it could just be a combined mode where there is a timer but after it goes out it simply continues the game on Relax Mode.

Or alternatively every word still has the timer and then at the end if you finish, it tells you how many words you completed under the timer and gives you a score based on that.

And then maybe an option for those who don't want the timer to show at all, since maybe it adds a bit of pressure. You can have just a simple option that removes the timer entirely from view

Agree on the timer.

In one sense I really enjoy the timer up to the point that I lose, but it feels very unsatisfactory, especially if I lose early, & I'm acutely aware the difficulty level it's set at will be experienced radically differently by different players (to the exclusion of most I would imagine).

Having a timerless mode is very much needed as an option - there's no real risk of "cheating" with these cookie-based browser games anyway since I could just have infinite retries in a private tab if I felt like doing that.

It’s the same reason people will instantly close a site with unwanted animations (ads).

But if this game was called “Do A Word Puzzle While Being Distracted By Animated Numbers in Your Peripheral Vision”, that would be alright.

Yeah screw the timer. I can't work under pressure like that when it comes to word games. Maybe other people will enjoy that, but not me.

Yea, the timer is a little stressful though I understand the purpose/design behind it. I do like the suggestion of the no timer or a relaxed mode with.

PS anyone have any other fun, simple games like this and Zanagrams? I found https://maptap.gg/ recently and that also gives me the same Classic Web feeling that OP mentioned.

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.

English is not my native tongue. If I had a relaxed mode, that'd be awesome :)

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.

Yeah, but also, is it really "18 words" if you don't get there?

I guess HABIT was the expected one here.

A continue that let's you keep playing would be fun. Or maybe different modes (eg hard vs normal)

Clear your cookies for the site or open incognito mode. But I agree there's no reason not to let people continue and just mark where they ended "legitimately".

tbh this should accept all dictionary matches

Very true and it's a bit lazy.

I'm load a short wordlist first and then the longer version async so it doesn't really affect how long until you can start playing.

Waste of bandwidth is true. Cloudflare pages hates me

And I didn't realize "audio" had only one consonant!

Maybe the game should limit the number of tries per word?

Yeah its just the single index.html file feel free to download it and adapt

It's unobfuscated. Right click, view source, there it is.

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!).

Just one shot in Claude if you have it or deepseek flash for free.

That's not how captchas work...

It should have shown you!

Yeah for sure I agree just kept it simple for now but will improve if people like it

Oof yeah thanks! Fixed now

Thanks! I thought it was fun to throw people straight into the game without instructions but you think it too unclear?

If it makes you feel better, I failed on #3. In my defense, I'm running on 2 hours of sleep.

Depends on which side of the pond (or Canadian border?) you're on ;)

> COLOR is not

Huh? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/color

Not the parent, but I just checked and it seems that all $iwords.com are taken for i<18

14 was taken.

Skill issue

haha yes. I got 2 and it said come back in 9hours. LOL. Ain't nobody got time for that.

lol