Show HN: Zanagrams

(zanagrams.com)

104 points | by pompomsheep 5 hours ago

29 comments

  • abnry 4 minutes ago
    Very nice! I solved them all in the backyard on a pleasant Sunday afternoon.
  • bbx 14 minutes ago
    Great game! I really like how it removes any possible letters or connections. I managed to finish two zanagrams without any wrong answers. It’d be great if there was a way to gain a “perfect” score.
  • jasonpeacock 3 hours ago
    It’s basically Ribbit from Puzzmo, which is fine because reimplementations let you experiment with different gameplay.

    https://www.puzzmo.com

    • abound 3 hours ago
      Came here to say this, Ribbit is a lot of fun, and Puzzmo in general is a really solid site.
  • azeirah 33 minutes ago
    You should add a scoreboard! I got zanagram #5 in 3 minutes and 53 seconds. Also found two bonus words

    I thought I was slow but now I see others took 10 minutes and 20 minutes! Maybe I'm not so slow!

    Zanagrams #5 Complete in 03:53 https://zanagrams.com/

  • acrophiliac 1 hour ago
    I'm stuck. Does that mean I chose the wrong word earlier and used up an essential letter? Does the sequence of word guesses matter? Is there an Undo feature so I can back up and try a different order of guesses? Can I get a hint? Is there a way to give up and see the solution (order of word guesses)?
    • pfg_ 1 hour ago
      You're not stuck, the board only removes letters and connections that are not used by any other word (probably excluding "bonus words"). So the word(s) you're missing are still on the board.

      No hint feathre though, the hints are the letters going away. You'll probably have to use a scrabble search or something.

    • blfr 47 minutes ago
      Gemini can solve them if you need a hint or want to give up and see the solution.
  • Cyclone_ 34 minutes ago
    The only thing I would add would be to keep track of the words already found.
    • jgilias 20 minutes ago
      It’s there, click on “words”
  • shrx 20 minutes ago
    Cool game! Definitely needs the bonus words counter in the shareable results snippet.
  • dpfu 1 hour ago
    Nice game! I found 20 words.

    I was a bit stunned by the concept of "bonus words". I found that every word should count. Also because some words are just plural forms (e.g. stroke+s), so kinda cheep?!

    Keep ups the good work!

    • frotaur 49 minutes ago
      I think the board (and disappearing letters) are made with a list of words in mind. Thus, to complete the puzzle (dissolve all letters) you cannot count the bonus words as they were not accounted when creating the letter graph.
  • wkjagt 1 hour ago
    This is so much fun. And something while playing reminded me of a this video I saw where someone asks her boyfriend "what does Y-E-S spell", and he said "yes". Then she asked him what "E-Y-E-S" spelled, and he couldn't figure it out (he kept saying "eee... yes?"). Anyway, I was looking at the remaining letters with just one word left to go. Four of them formed a word I had already guessed, plus one letter, but didn't make any sense with that additional letter. Until it did. I won't spoil which was it was, but it was in puzzle #1.
  • brtsml 55 minutes ago
    Zanagrams #5 Complete in 22:17

    https://files.catbox.moe/fgmb4b.jpeg

    Super fun, i found a tons of words and the last 3 ones were really hard to find

  • iku 1 hour 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.)
  • iKlsR 3 hours 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.

  • veganjay 58 minutes ago
    Fun game. I found had trouble seeing the color contrast, so I modified the connection color by updating the CSS for .root.tile to #aaffff
  • ctenb 2 hours 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.
  • heystefan 51 minutes ago
    Love this! Added to bookmarks. Wish it had a counter for bonus words so I know if I missed them.
  • a-l-e-c 1 hour 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 :)
  • NDlurker 4 hours ago
    Cool game. Snus isn't in the word list btw

    Found six bonus words.

  • ggaswint 2 hours ago
    Love how the connections disappear once the letter is used up. Feels progressive
  • almara 4 hours ago
    Fun! I like how the puzzle naturally gets easier as you solve it. How do you decide which words to include?
    • pompomsheep 4 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 3 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)
  • cryptoboy2283 4 hours ago
  • blfr 4 hours ago
    I like that it also handles words that aren't planned in. You get a nice "bonus word" popout.
    • msla 4 hours ago
      Yeah, I got "TUNS" as a bonus word.
      • philsnow 2 hours ago
        Yeah tuns (a word well known to homebrewers) is not as esoteric as yttria (a word known to.. chemists?)
      • smitty1e 3 hours ago
        Not sure how to vote for it, though.
  • purple-leafy 2 hours ago
    Cool game! Well that’s a sign I need to launch my word game this week if any
  • urostrstenjak 4 hours ago
    Interesting game! Is this an original idea? Is there plan to add "endless" number of zanagrams?
  • moomin 2 hours ago
    Feels very like Squaredle.
  • mateenah 2 hours ago
    pretty cool. how are you deciding or generating puzzles ?
  • msla 4 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 3 hours ago
    [dead]
  • rd3i 1 hour ago
    [dead]