Show HN: Daily word puzzle game based on polysemy

Show HN: Daily word puzzle game based on polysemy(omitten.com)

6 points by tomburgs 42 days ago | 4 comments

I built this daily puzzle game called "Omitten".

The idea came from a compulsive habit I got from reading books on an e-reader and constantly looking up definitions (iykyk). Quite often you'd see a single word with 20 different meanings in different contexts, and I wanted to build a game around that.

In the game you get a maximum of 4 clues. The first one will generally be an archaic form or an unusual context. The second and third pivot into entirely different domains to try and trick your brain, and by the fourth, it should be fairly obvious. You start with only the first clue, and as you make guesses or skip, the next clues unlock, but you lose 25 points per clue.

Today is only Day 5 of the project, and it is currently a slaughterhouse. The win rate is sitting at 24% (you can see this yourself after completing) because today's word is a sneaky one. Typically the win rate sits at the 90-99% area, so yeah.

The tech stack itself is fairly simple, it uses a fairly minimal svelte frontend — relies on their motion and transition APIs for most of the animations (combined with some simple CSS animations). On the backend it's a Go monolith running a [Connect RPC server](https://connectrpc.com/), which was a super fun learning experience and using what is almost exactly GRPC directly on frontend feels magical. I tried to follow Google's AIP as closely as I could for the rpc methods, and I quite like the way it turned out. The backend is a simple pg database that's interacted with via sqlc and atlas for migrations. By day 3 people started asking about accounts so they could play across devices and keep their streak, so it was a fun chance to use PASETO for tokens and argon2 for password hashing.

I'm excited to hear what people think and any feedback is much appreciated!

vunderba 42 days ago |

Nice job, it kind of reminds me of College Bowl trivia.

The idea is that each card contains a lot of information, and players can “buzz in” as early as they want as the card is read out loud. The clue on the card starts out extremely esoteric and gradually becomes more common knowledge, so it rewards people who have a deeper understanding of the topic and can buzz in faster.

For example:

  For example: “Early in this novel, a rule is established that only the person holding a conch shell may talk during group meetings. Glasses belonging to (*) Piggy are broken by the choirboy Jack. School-aged children are stranded on an island in—for 10 points—name this novel by William Golding.”

Dave210 42 days ago |

I really liked it! The fact that you gradually get more information if you miss is awesome, feels like you have more pieces of the puzzle each time you miss and have to put them together to solve it.

It could be interesting to have an increasing difficulty throughout the week (like chess.com daily puzzles) where the monday word is easy and the sunday one is almost impossible. But IDK, maybe it’s more difficult to integrate than I think and maybe I’m the only one that likes that

Great job!

ChaitanyaSai 42 days ago |

nice :) I cheated though by pasting it in because I couldn't bear the thought of having to wait for a day. Didn't even wait till the 4th try.

tomburgs 42 days ago | |

haha i'll take that as a massive compliment! since today's puzzle is so brutal i thought people would rage quit and never look at it again, so someone caring enough to cheat is awesome. today's stats seem to be at a 24% win rate, so i don't blame you at all.