I'm also building a simple game using Claude, so this is quite inspirational. Keep going!

I started with a load of vowels in my hand, just two consonants. I found a 3 letter word OK, but got a consonant and vowel back. I traded two vowels and got two more back. Couldn't make a 4 letter word, game over. I suppose the difference in scrabble is that if I had passed, someone else may have put a consonant down that I could use...

I’m confused about a lot of things about the game; I guess most particularly the letter draws — do I and my opponents get the exact same sequence of letters when traded in? Do we draw from the same (replaceable? Non-replaceable?) bag?

When I went to sudden death I saw very different words — in my case, I drew a J — was that it, since my foe only used a word with a G, I was basically guaranteed a win. Was that poor word choice on his part, poor or no trading, or a different tile set the foe had?

I think it would be nice to see all the possible letters in the ‘bag’ when we’re looking at trading.

Finally, is there a time component? It would be nice to get some indications about the opponent - maybe showing where they are hovering / clicking, or a clock countdown.

Also - fun!

  My mom has been regularly beating me 
  at Scrabble since I could spell.

Still, a very fun game, well made.

Did you really need to waste money and resources to make a simple word game? Are people really getting to be this lazy already? /rant

Just thought this was kind of amusing given that you're obsessed with word games.

** Feedback for the game **

I highly recommend adjusting the color palette. Aside from the letters themselves, everything tends to blur together particularly the square tiles on the black background. When there was a bit of glare on my screen, I could barely see them at all.

On a more personal note, I don't think that dark-mode style palettes really fit most word-based games. If you look at games like Scrabble, bananagrams, etc. they remind me of the color scheme from the 1981 arcade game Centipede, borrowing from that same palette of lighter pastel tones.