Show HN: Zanagrams

(zanagrams.com)

61 points | by pompomsheep 3 hours ago

13 comments

  • ctenb 15 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.

    • jasonpeacock 1 hour ago

      It’s basically Ribbit from Puzzmo, which is fine because reimplementations let you experiment with different gameplay.

      https://www.puzzmo.com

      • abound 1 hour ago

        Came here to say this, Ribbit is a lot of fun, and Puzzmo in general is a really solid site.

      • iKlsR 51 minutes 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.

        • purple-leafy 26 minutes ago

          Cool game! Well that’s a sign I need to launch my word game this week if any

          • moomin 13 minutes ago

            Feels very like Squaredle.

            • em-bee 1 hour 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.

                • 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 41 minutes ago

                      Yeah tuns (a word well known to homebrewers) is not as esoteric as yttria (a word known to.. chemists?)

                      • smitty1e 1 hour ago

                        Not sure how to vote for it, though.

                    • almara 2 hours ago

                      Fun! I like how the puzzle naturally gets easier as you solve it. How do you decide which words to include?

                      • pompomsheep 2 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

                      • urostrstenjak 2 hours ago

                        Interesting game! Is this an original idea? Is there plan to add "endless" number of zanagrams?

                        • mateenah 46 minutes ago

                          pretty cool. how are you deciding or generating puzzles ?

                          • cryptoboy2283 2 hours ago
                            • 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