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Show HN: Huewords, a Word and Logic Puzzle

huewords.snellman.net

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Re: Show HN: Huewords, a Word and Logic Puzzle

#41

Post by quuxplusone »

jsnell wrote: post #38
quuxplusone wrote: post #37

Very nice game! I'm very surprised that (IIUC) you say you managed to automate the generation of such lively fills. I've gotten words such as SIGMA and ANGST in helpful and surprising positions. On the other hand, automation might explain how I got one grid involving BHAJI (a food I'm not familiar with — I thought maybe you expected it to be familiar to your readers, but now I suspect it was put in by an uncaring com…

Thanks! It's just the word layout that's automated. The word list (about 4k words) is entirely hand-curated. I had some tooling to make it easier, but every word was selected by me rather than automation. But obviously it's impossible for any single person to be propely calibrated, mistakes can happen, and I'm not a native speaker so there are some odd blind spots in my vocabulary. "Bhaji" was a word I personally tho…

Re "bhaji," IIUC from Google, it's a kind of fritter. In American Indian cuisine fritters would be "pakora," and we're also big on "samosas."

Re the two word lists — sure, a "legal" word list and a "target" word list, like Wordle. (I enjoy how Huewords manages to combine mechanics from Wordle, crosswords, and sudoku!) But I imagine that the larger your "legal" word list gets, the more difficult it is to generate a puzzle that has only one solution, right?

Re: Show HN: Huewords, a Word and Logic Puzzle

#43

Post by gramakri2 »

jsnell wrote: post #36
gramakri2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and here is today's but if I copy I don't get a link . Just "Huewords Daily #44 solved in 06:17 with no hints! https://huewords.snellman.net/ "

Hi. The difference intentional, but I could easily be convinced that it's the wrong decision. Here's the thinking: Basically if you allow deep-linking into the daily, they kind of stop being a daily puzzle. They'll also confuse new players following the link, because they'll be thrown into a more complex puzzle than most are prepared to tackle without doing the tutorial and a small puzzle or two. Hence the link to th…

yeah, that's fair. Maybe just remove the share link for daily puzzles? Great puzzle btw.

Re: Show HN: Huewords, a Word and Logic Puzzle

#44

Post by quuxplusone »

jsnell wrote: post #38
quuxplusone wrote: post #37

Very nice game! I'm very surprised that (IIUC) you say you managed to automate the generation of such lively fills. I've gotten words such as SIGMA and ANGST in helpful and surprising positions. On the other hand, automation might explain how I got one grid involving BHAJI (a food I'm not familiar with — I thought maybe you expected it to be familiar to your readers, but now I suspect it was put in by an uncaring com…

Thanks! It's just the word layout that's automated. The word list (about 4k words) is entirely hand-curated. I had some tooling to make it easier, but every word was selected by me rather than automation. But obviously it's impossible for any single person to be propely calibrated, mistakes can happen, and I'm not a native speaker so there are some odd blind spots in my vocabulary. "Bhaji" was a word I personally tho…

Another wordlist surprise and two UI suggestions.

My mother got a puzzle containing HAVES (as in the opposite of "have-nots," I guess!). I think that's not a word; at least it shouldn't be in the answer wordlist.

My wife once clicked "Skip" basically by accident — thinking that it would skip to the next square, or word, or something — and found that what it means is "Skip to the next puzzle," with (AFAIK) no way to get back your progress on the puzzle you just skipped. Which was disconcerting. But that mistake happens only once per player... unless they happen to fat-finger "Skip" when they meant "Hint", I guess! Maybe "Skip" should pop up a modal dialog, both explaining what it's proposing to do ("Give up and skip to the next puzzle? Yes / No") and also giving the player a fatter target for their next tap in case they tapped "Skip" by accident.

Another thing I've noticed myself having trouble with is when a group of letters contains duplicates: if the group is like "LLSS" and I want to fill them all in quickly, I find it most natural to double-tap "L" then double-tap "S", as opposed to tapping the first "L", the second "L", the first "S", the second "S". Right now, double-tapping doesn't work; it will put the first "L" in the first cell, then undo that and put the first "L" into the second cell instead. I think it should be able to figure out what I mean.

Similarly, if I've tapped the first "L" and the second "S" to fill the first two cells, and then for the third cell I tap the first "L" again, I think it should be smart enough to act as if I'd tapped the second "L". Because obviously I don't actually care which of the two "L"s fills that cell — equal letters are fungible as far as the player is concerned.

Oh, and it occurred to me to wonder: Is it possible by random chance that one of the letter-groups displayed at the bottom of the puzzle will happen to spell out something vulgar? (If you bother thinking about that issue at all, then I think you could address it by blacklisting certain letter-groups, i.e. shipping a blacklist of anagrams (or even partial anagrams) of vulgar words, instead of a list of vulgar words itself. Or if you sort each letter-group as "consonants first, then vowels," it probably never visibly forms a word.)

Re: Show HN: Huewords, a Word and Logic Puzzle

#45

Post by jsnell »

quuxplusone wrote: post #44
jsnell wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! It's just the word layout that's automated. The word list (about 4k words) is entirely hand-curated. I had some tooling to make it easier, but every word was selected by me rather than automation. But obviously it's impossible for any single person to be propely calibrated, mistakes can happen, and I'm not a native speaker so there are some odd blind spots in my vocabulary. "Bhaji" was a word I personally tho…

Another wordlist surprise and two UI suggestions. My mother got a puzzle containing HAVES (as in the opposite of "have-nots," I guess!). I think that's not a word; at least it shouldn't be in the answer wordlist. My wife once clicked "Skip" basically by accident — thinking that it would skip to the next square, or word, or something — and found that what it means is "Skip to the next puzzle," with (AFAIK) no way to g…

Thanks. I should definitely get around to adding a confirmation for skip.

The double letter problem is less clear. I've made that same mistake myself, but the the fix of using the other identical letter only works unambiguously when the other letter is unassigned. There will be an inconsistency when double-tapping a letter when its duplicate is already assigned. Might still be a worthwhile tradeoff, but not a slam dunk.

My intended rule was to not include anything used only as part of some well known phrase but never standalone. So yeah, "haves" probably should not have made the cut, even if I do think it's a word :)

Re: offensive words formed randomly from the letters, I'm not too worried about it. The letters are already sorted alphabetically within each group, which limits the options a lot. (I guess it's just "ass" and "bint".)

Re: Show HN: Huewords, a Word and Logic Puzzle

#46

Post by gnramires »

It wasn't clear to me you can place colors/groups arbitrarily -- maybe add "Each group can be assigned different colors based on location." to instructions. Maybe color each group background instead of individual letters. Perhaps when you type a letter that comes from multiple possible groups, open a dialogue for choosing the group. Bhaji is a bit of an unexpected word (or, I learned a new word :) ).

Nice game :)

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