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:
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Fourbe — Connections-style, but the connections are spelled out in crossword-style clues across four rounds
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Spying Bee — Word find flipped on it's head where players must reveal letters before they can select
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Invertle — word guesser with higher/lower hints
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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?
Comments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48292154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48292154)
Points: 1