I've been enjoying this one too -- https://nytimes-spellingbee.com/
Show HN: Three Magic Words
81–90 of 143 posts
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#82I've never felt more disconnected from pop culture than now. The quantity of posts that just ASSUMED people knew what the hell Wordle was helped me realize that I do, indeed, live under a rock.
"I've never heard of wordle before" is becoming the most tiresome humblebrag of 2022
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#83Bug: if you click the next letter while the 'victory' animation for the previous letter is still playing, it replaces the previous correct letter with the new one you clicked, instead of putting the second letter in the next empty space Too much animation overall
I think I follow, thank you. Perhaps a reduced animation option (or respecting prefers-reduced-motion setting) would help.
I think, once you've put a letter in place, clicking another letter should either be blocked until animations are finished or should go ahead and fill the next available place
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#84I really like the execution on this. One piece of feedback is that the timer gave me anxiety and I closed it. I do puzzles to phase out from stress not to challenge myself in a time bound environment
The timer also really doesn't mesh well with the slow "letters falling down" animation between rounds. The UI is sending very mixed signals with "how quickly can you do this?" and "hold on, gotta wait here for a bit" at the same time.
Yeah, if you want the dropping animation and you can't start typing before then, then don't start the timer before the animation finishes.
There is also the age-old argument about British-English vs American English e.g. Armor is not spelled that way in British English so it takes a lot more effort to work these out.
Pretty slick though.
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree... I think there are actually a couple of niggles that work together: - there's a timer - solutions are not always unique Often in Wordle, you'll have three or four green letters, which leaves several possible answers, and you just have to guess which one is correct. Some days you'll be lucky, some days you won't! But it feels OK because you're not working against a clock; so you have time to mull over the po…
There are a few reasons I didn't pursue that — one of them that comes to mind because of having to deal with repeats - for example, let's say in round 1 you have TRIAL and in round 2 you have TRAIL. You see TR---, guess TRAIL in round one and the game marks it correct. In round 2, you see TR--- and guess TRAIL again. I think that solution lock you experience - it's a little uncomfortable, but once you learn to wriggl…
I actually think it would be much more fun if it could accept multiple solutions. You could even have 5 words and a letter bank. That part of it, quickly finding ways to use the letters, is fun. The speed bonus would make a lot more sense then.
> I think that solution lock you experience - it's a little uncomfortable, but once you learn to wriggle your way out of it, you get that "aha" feeling I'm going for.
This is the part that gives me the "ugh" experience.
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#86The game seems to expect a particular solution even when there are multiple possibilities of forming correct words. For example, I tried "peeks" & "bully" but the game only accepted "peels" & "bulky". This is frustrating, as one has to "mind-read" the game. Another thing to improve is to reduce the frequency of plural forms. Plurals are just a cop-out to turn four-letter words into five-letter words. ;)
I encountered _the exact same thing_. I immediately closed the game after that.
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#87I like it! But my one criticism is that it wastes too much time on animation, especially when transitioning from one round to the next. I'm anxious to get started, but have to wait at least 5 seconds for the current puzzle to dissolve, and then all the tiles for the next round to move into place one by one.
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#88I know that you're not copying the wordle vibe necessarily, but the animations seem too over the top to me. They're pushing into candy crush territory, and to me that a strong detractor. One of the thing I appreciate about wordle is that it isn't trying to be more than it is, and this feels too much like the free games that fill app stores and employs a bunch of dark patterns to hook your attention.
Seconding this. What's so refreshing about Wordle is just how respectful it is of the user's time and attention. Beyond the "one a day, and you're done" structure, Wordle's presentation is clean, snappy, and completely relevant to the task at hand.
I like Three Magic Words's gameplay, but yeah, the presentation left a very sour taste in my mouth. I just want to solve a puzzle and that's it. No need for superfluous animation or scoring.
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think there can be any easy way around issues like that in games like these. At least this game doesn’t penalize you for it
never generate a puzzle with two solutions, or accept both solutions. in this case that puzzle had more solutions because it rejected keeps and bully as well
> never generate a puzzle with two solutions, or accept both solutions.
I think there's a very popular game making the rounds at the moment that flies in the face of this "wisdom"
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#90It's too easy.