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Show HN: Vowl daily word guessing game

vowlgame.com

35 pointsmatryer50 comments

My puzzle word has four vowels. My two guesses each four vowels, but not the same four (e.g. "AAIO" and "AEIO"), and I got four vowel matches for each guess. I know how that result can pop out of a particular way of scoring, but it's not what I expect from a word guessing game.

Yeah that really messed with me OOA and OAA shouldn't count the same imo, but at bare minimum if it's a feature not a bug it should be noted in the How to Play

Yes, this tripped me up as well. I thought it was scoring the correct number of vowels/consonants out of those you entered, not the number of vowels/consonants you have identified in the solution. Guessing both "AA" and "AE" and getting the same result of "2 vowels identified" feels odd if one of those letters is not used in the solution.

Thanks so much for this feedback. I think you're right. I've updated the game, and I think it makes more sense now. Would somebody be able to try it out for me and let me know? Thanks again.

Was eager to try but found it buggy - or at least, confusingly arcane in how guesses are scored.

Today's 'transportation' puzzle had 4 consonants & 4 vowels. I got to a guess (nonsense string) whose feedback was 4 vowels correct, 4 consonants correct. (Not sharing here to avoid spoiling for others.)

After becoming frustrated that I couldn't devise a word using those letters, I entered them into online word-finders like those for Scrabble or the Internet Anagram Server – and they're not turning up any single 8-letter word/words (transportation related or not, compound or not) that might be the answer.

Maybe brands? No luck.

Show to wife, she makes suggestion that's similar to the 8 letters I've been trying, but differs in one vowel. Bingo.

So: it was telling me I had 4 vowels correct even when I was supplying a vowel NOT present in the answer.

(A rot13 of a string it erroneously told me had 4 vowels and 4 consonants correct: ZNEBHVYA)

When you guess a vowel that's repeated in the answer, it counts all the occurrences.

That makes no sense. Can someone please just tell me the word?

Answer to the first one, written on pastebin to avoid anyone seeing it as a spoiler:

https://pastebin.com/A7RQjNdd

It does make sense. It's just counter intuitive and not the way most puzzle games work.

It makes it quite hard. I'm not sure if it's a good hard or a bad hard yet.

I think you're right - I've updated the rules - give it a go and let me know. Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks so much for this feedback. I think you're right. I've updated the game, and I think it makes more sense now. Please give it a try and let me know.

I'm probably dumb, but I didn't realize "Transportation" was a clue until I looked at the network traffic and saw it labeled as such in one of the responses. In fact, I didn't even notice the word "transportation" on the page until I was looking for it, so there's something wrong with the graphic design (perhaps there are too many line starts -- my eye didn't know where to look).

I'd recommend adding the word "Clue:" in front of the clue. Perhaps consult with a true design professional too, I'm just shooting from the hip and giving feedback on my experience. I made 7 guesses before the clue, and I got the solution in 1 guess after seeing the clue.

I like the game in general though.

Great feedback, thank you. I’ll make some tweaks today.

If the feedback is supposed to be helpful in narrowing down future guesses - I didn’t find it to be. If it’s just for scoring attempts then it’s working great.

Would prefer to know which letters were correct even if there’s no info about position correctness.

I found the answer trivial to google for after I gave up trying to think of an “8 letter word for transportation” that had the vowels in the right place

Better feedback probably would have kept me from resorting to google

Great idea, but I find gameplay to be a bit too tedious to be enjoyable.

In this aspect Wordle got it right with the color cues, but here I don't think it's even possible to simplify the gameplay that way.

I did today's, which was clued as transportation/country/kings of leon song.

Transportation was really fun; I thought a long time and got it in 1, and I felt I had a grasp on what one part of the word was gonna be before I worked out the whole word.

I didn't enjoy the country or kings of leon puzzles; it's possible I would have if I'd played it differently.

But I couldn't really bring myself to make guesses I know aren't the answer. I think most of the daily word games have taught me that. So what I did was look up a list of countries and kings of leon songs, which is basically just looking up the answer.

I'll play again tomorrow to see how I feel once I play it differently, it seems more fun if I'm willing to guess CCAACAAC or whatever when I know it's something I'm never going to figure out in 1.

Played it again. Got the transportation category again in 1 after another long and satisfying think. So that was really fun once again.

I tried gathering info on the beatles song, I'm never gonna figure it out except either by looking up a list or playing a mastermind information deduction game. It just felt like I was gonna have to go through most of the alphabet with BAB BABA, CEC CECE, DID DIDI etc type guesses until I know most or all of the letters to unscramble. Instead I called it quits on this one.

I'd work on the feedback giving more immediately actionable info, and perhaps work on narrowing the categories to things basically everyone knows.

Game is buggy, as others have mentioned. Either that or the scoring makes no sense. Why did it say I had 4 vowels correct, if my guess contained 4 vowels and one of them wasn't in the final word?

If the word contains two vowels that are the same, it counts one occurrence as two correct ones. For example:

Word: METER

Guess: KEXXX (two vowels correct)

Guess: KEXER (two vowels correct)

Thanks for the feedback feedback. What would you expect it to be?

If the target word contains two E and my guess only contains one E it should say 1 vowel correct, not 2. Isn't that obvious? What am I missing? I presume you made it this way for a reason.

Hey Kiro, thanks - I think you're right. I've updated the game to reflect this, please give it a go.

After playing through to step 3, but not knowing any king's of Leon songs, I have to say: this game is not fun for me. I have played many daily games and like most of them.

What they almost all have in common is being able to inch closer to your target. In this case, the best you can do is eventually deduce all the letters of the target, at which point you are left with an anagram. There will be no further clues that help you at all.

In its current form, this is not fun and I would not recommend it or play again.

Is 'Y' treated as a consonant or a vowel? Does it depend on the word ("sky" versus "yuck")?

Genuinely curious: in what situation would ‘Y’ ever be counted as a vowel? I’ve never ever come across this.

Well, as I mentioned, “sky”. Or “country”, “homily”, and “gym”.

When you're classifying letters in the abstract, Y doesn't get included in the vowels.

There is a school of thought that says you should also be able to classify letters as they appear in specific words.† That's where the idea comes from that "Y is sometimes a vowel".

But people who believe that they hold to that school are generally unwilling to say that M is sometimes a vowel, despite the fact that the spelling of the second syllable in rhythm is "m". This is difficult to reconcile with the justification given for Y sometimes being a vowel, that any syllable must contain a vowel.

As far as the phonetics go, they support the idea that "m" /m/ in rhythm is not a vowel [it would be called a "syllabic consonant"] while "y" /i/ in homily is. Obviously, this requires tossing out the idea that all syllables must contain vowels. Phonetics assigns an intermediate status to the "y" /j/ in "yell" - it is a vowel as far as the mechanics of producing it go, but it clearly behaves as if it is a consonant, so it is called a "glide".

As far as the etymology goes, Y represents a foreign sound, a vowel in ancient Greek, and it's always a vowel. Interestingly enough, the ancient Greek vowel is sometimes a consonant (what you'd think of as V) in modern Greek.

† This doesn't really work; any particular word will have a definite spelling and a definite pronunciation, but that doesn't mean that it's possible to consistently map the letters of the spelling to the sounds of the pronunciation.

Maybe it's an accent thing (mine is typical British) but the 'm' in 'rhythm' doesn't act like a vowel in my mind, not the way 'y' does in 'sky'.

The only kind-of vowel sound in the second syllable of rhythm is what you get from saying "th", but actually it just sounds like 3 consonants together without a vowel.

People say that 'y' is sometimes a vowel because it sometimes sounds like one, not because it sometimes fits in a syllable.

Y /j/ always sounds like a vowel. As I mentioned, phonetically it is one. It's just that a shortened version can act as a consonant for phonological purposes. Y as represented in yell and pretty are the same sound; it's just shorter in yell.

I always learned y was sometimes a vowel and some googling after your question led me onto the fact that W is sometimes considered a vowel as well - though the only examples I’ve found are welsh loan words like “cwm”

i've always told myself that they meant things like two and few

IMHO almost every game I have ever played in which there is a vowel/consonant distinction begins immediately by telling you how Y is handled.

For what it’s worth, other languages than English may consider Y a vowel. French does, for instance.

In my opinion this actually makes more sense.

thanks so much for your feedback - I'm going to add a note on which letters are vowels :)

It’s interesting how much the placement of vowels can help you imagine the shape of the word.

One small point of feedback. It wasn’t clear that you were expected to enter a space when the clue has multiple words and uses a slash `/`.

Maybe allow the `/` to be entered, too, and add a note that the user can just enter a space instead?

Thanks for the feedback. Very helpful. I’ve added a note about the spaces but I like your idea.

I second this. I typed in the slashes and I had the correct answer, but it didn't accept it until I swapped out the slashes for spaces. I thought the rule was that we were separating words with slashes in this game, so I would expect it to accept the slashes as correct.

Thanks so much for the feedback. I've changed it so that slashes will be accepted in place of spaces.

It's pretty good. Scoring a single letter N times if it occurs N times in the target word, instead of just once, is misleading.

When does the new game release? It is almost noon in California and it is still on the previous days game

I found this pretty hard. Took 23 guesses to solve step 1.

At that stage, I expected to have a result I could share with people. Just being taken to a step 2 was demoralising. And feels too long for a daily game.

thanks for your feedback - please keep playing and let me know if you change your mind.

The first one took me 17 guesses, writing nonsense words to count each letter in the answer. The other two I managed in 1.

I’ll have to add this to my list. currently do the Wordle, guessthe.game, guess the audio, guess the book, and waffle.

this is neat

the 3 letter challenge didn't really show off the game though

I just guessed 3 possible words and happened to be correct on my 3rd guess

True, future levels get more interesting :) like today’s.

mostly straightforward, but a question: should you use 'Antigua and Barbuda' as the country question would you have it as V__V_VV/V__/_V__V_V ? The rules are easy to get used to through the intro but edge cases may get odd.

Yeah it would show that, which might make it easy for some but harder for others.

people might also be interested in https://www.wordiply.com/

I wanted to like this but I kind of hate it. The overall goal is so uninspiring.

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