I build and hand-write five daily word puzzles at dailyworder.com. Every clue and answer for the dailies are mine — I use AI for the code and it's unlocked crazy speed on small but thorny problems.
One technical detail as an example: Pyramid's editor (one of the five games) uses a ~350KB precomputed dataset of valid frameworks — grids where a single vowel, dropped into every slot, produces valid English words across all rows. Building the dataset was the actual work (combinatorial search over a 60k-word dictionary with constraint checks) but I did that in one session. Runtime is trivial: pick a framework, pick a vowel, render. Works offline. Don't think I could spend the time on it before LLMs.
The other four:
- Fourbe — Connections-style, but the connections are spelled out in crossword-style clues across four rounds
- Spying Bee — Word find flipped on it's head where players must reveal letters before they can select
- Invertle — word guesser with higher/lower hints
- Totum — letter-tile spelling game with a 16-letter pool
Built solo, evenings and weekends. Vite + React + TypeScript, Supabase, Vercel. iOS app is a Capacitor wrapper. Daily puzzles are free.
Genuinely curious what HN thinks. What's confusing about the games? What would you build differently?
One technical detail as an example: Pyramid's editor (one of the five games) uses a ~350KB precomputed dataset of valid frameworks — grids where a single vowel, dropped into every slot, produces valid English words across all rows. Building the dataset was the actual work (combinatorial search over a 60k-word dictionary with constraint checks) but I did that in one session. Runtime is trivial: pick a framework, pick a vowel, render. Works offline. Don't think I could spend the time on it before LLMs.
The other four:
- Fourbe — Connections-style, but the connections are spelled out in crossword-style clues across four rounds
- Spying Bee — Word find flipped on it's head where players must reveal letters before they can select
- Invertle — word guesser with higher/lower hints
- Totum — letter-tile spelling game with a 16-letter pool
Built solo, evenings and weekends. Vite + React + TypeScript, Supabase, Vercel. iOS app is a Capacitor wrapper. Daily puzzles are free.
Genuinely curious what HN thinks. What's confusing about the games? What would you build differently?