Show HN: Zanagrams

(zanagrams.com)

75 points | by pompomsheep 3 hours ago

17 comments

  • iku 16 minutes ago
    Great puzzle! Is there a way to give up and see all the answers? After 20 minutes or so still have 8 words to find. (Not a native English speaker.)
  • jasonpeacock 2 hours ago
    It’s basically Ribbit from Puzzmo, which is fine because reimplementations let you experiment with different gameplay.

    https://www.puzzmo.com

    • abound 2 hours ago
      Came here to say this, Ribbit is a lot of fun, and Puzzmo in general is a really solid site.
  • a-l-e-c 21 minutes ago
    Simple and fun, appreciate the definitions! Was wondering about ideas for creating a simple game using the vocab list from my koreader app, but will probably need to be a crossword type game where I need to match definitions with words. This just reminded me of that :)
  • ctenb 47 minutes ago
    Cool that they list the definitions of the words afterwards. This makes it even more fun for non-native speakers, as it adds a free learning aspect to it.
  • iKlsR 1 hour ago
    Pretty fun, took me about 10 minutes but found 24 words 10 of them bonus. This was #5 for future viewers.

    Edit: welp, spent another 15 mins and managed to solve the previous 4. Currently whipping up a custom version for myself that gives a new set of words related to a theme on each solve, love it.

  • ggaswint 24 minutes ago
    Love how the connections disappear once the letter is used up. Feels progressive
  • almara 3 hours ago
    Fun! I like how the puzzle naturally gets easier as you solve it. How do you decide which words to include?
    • pompomsheep 3 hours ago
      Thanks. I use a combination of AI to first score the words by obscurity and then manually decide which ones to include based on this score and my own judgement.

      I then manually test each of the puzzles and throw out any that I feel weren't "fun" to solve for whatever reason

  • em-bee 2 hours ago
    the score should include how many bonus words you found (out of how many there were in total) and instead of time it should count how many tries you made because technically you could brute force this and try all combinations. counting each try would eliminate that (for anyone trying to get a high score)
  • NDlurker 2 hours ago
    Cool game. Snus isn't in the word list btw

    Found six bonus words.

  • purple-leafy 58 minutes ago
    Cool game! Well that’s a sign I need to launch my word game this week if any
  • blfr 2 hours ago
    I like that it also handles words that aren't planned in. You get a nice "bonus word" popout.
    • msla 2 hours ago
      Yeah, I got "TUNS" as a bonus word.
      • philsnow 1 hour ago
        Yeah tuns (a word well known to homebrewers) is not as esoteric as yttria (a word known to.. chemists?)
      • smitty1e 2 hours ago
        Not sure how to vote for it, though.
  • moomin 46 minutes ago
    Feels very like Squaredle.
  • cryptoboy2283 2 hours ago
  • urostrstenjak 2 hours ago
    Interesting game! Is this an original idea? Is there plan to add "endless" number of zanagrams?
  • mateenah 1 hour ago
    pretty cool. how are you deciding or generating puzzles ?
  • msla 2 hours ago
    There are a couple of games like this on Android I play:

    https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/com.vayunmathur.gam...

    https://github.com/plhosk/wordtracer

    They're both on FDroid

  • aevv 2 hours ago
    [dead]