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pompomsheeptoday at 1:20 PM10 repliesview on HN

Did you find a word that wasn't accepted you thought should be?

I do have another version where it accepts ANY word but I found it quite unsatisfying when I survived by randomly spamming combinations and finding a really obscure word.

So am currently running it against a 20,000 word wordlist instead of my larger 300,000 wordlist


Replies

happytoexplaintoday at 1:22 PM

The third one in the archive wouldn't accept "tase" or "sate" for "seat".

DamnInterestingtoday at 2:41 PM

I've built a some word games over the years (e.g., wordwhile.com, omiword.com), and one thing I've discovered is that players find it very unsatisfying when they enter a real, valid word and the game rejects it. I imagine that the timer would amplify that sense of unfairness.

Granted, there are also people who get annoyed when the game seems too accepting of unusual words, but if you can point them to a valid dictionary definition for that oddball word, they usually accept it without argument.

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maxweylandttoday at 1:38 PM

Going two days back in the archive, "egret" not allowed

shaftwaytoday at 4:18 PM

On today's puzzle, `WROGHT` was rejected, and I got `GROWTH` just in the nick of time.

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elxrtoday at 1:47 PM

"braze" is a very common word, especially if you like bicycles.

Definitely not any less valid or unsatisfying than "zebra".

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paulluuktoday at 1:49 PM

Why not just only allow a single try, but accept any "real" word?

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svantanatoday at 1:48 PM

the obvious solution is to not use the words that have an obscure word as anagram. I failed on 'target' because I went for 'regatta'.

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mhbtoday at 1:59 PM

quite/quiet

fsckboytoday at 2:16 PM

Did you find a word that wasn't accepted you thought should be?

EARLS was not accepted, and I had already decided not to try REALS. (is there a rule against plurals?) what it was looking for was LASER which has a more tenuous claim on being a word than those two.

IAmGraydontoday at 1:26 PM

300,000? The Oxford dictionary only contains 171,000!

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