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Show HN: I've built a words game based on binary search

https://hilogame.cc/
43•ludovicianul•5h ago

Comments

another-dave•5h ago
this feels like a fun premise!

As feedback, I think I'd enjoy it more with shorter words or more guesses

captaincrunch•5h ago
I recently did the same (made a daily game) and I am approaching 100k plays since March. https://plot-hole.com - the best thing so far about this app has been the analytics which you can check out here: https://plot-hole.com/daily-analytics-82u4fhrvw
captaincrunch•5h ago
Just sitting at 99,736 plays since March!!
doophus•4h ago
That's impressive! How have you been attracting players?
captaincrunch•2h ago
So far its been direct referrals, which was surprising. I did an initial post on Reddit, and its grown quite a lot since!!
BrightOne•2h ago
Just played a round, the app claims my play was the 100,000th. I find that hard to believe :)
captaincrunch•2h ago
You absoloutly were then! <3
pimlottc•2h ago
Is this... intentionally growing and shrinking the page size to make the scroll bars animate
nmstoker•5h ago
Looks good. What's with the submit buttons being put on the left on virtual game keyboards, even though Return/Enter usually on the right on typical keyboards. Wordle also does this.
captaincrunch•5h ago
I struggled with an input box for the first month on my game, Apple and its crazy UI/UX. I think you made the right choice with the keyboard.
rfl890•4h ago
Having the backspace on the left would probably mess up most mobile typers' muscle memory, and since that key is pressed once vs backspace which might be pressed multiple times, it would be a sensible tradeoff to keep submit on the left side
hidelooktropic•5h ago
I like the idea but it takes a lot of thinking power that I have to come up with actual words that long each time.
dalmo3•5h ago
I don't get it. I type a word and nothing happens?
eoanermine•5h ago
There's "Go" button in lower left corner
jonwinstanley•4h ago
Go button needs to be a different colour/contrast. I also didn’t see it
4chandaily•5h ago
I loaded the puzzle and was presented with an empty 7 character prompt. I tried typing in three different seven-letter words, and each time I hit "GO", I was told the word was "Not in the word list".

With no further guidance given, I closed the tab.

saberience•5h ago
Had a similar issue, several of my words weren't accepted.
pimlottc•2h ago
Similar issue, my first guess was "plaudit" and it was not accepted
dec0dedab0de•5h ago
I think a practice mode, or letting people play the older games would be good. I can think of a few older people who would love this, but would definitely need a few tries to get the hang of it.
vibcdingenjoyer•4h ago
I agree with everyone else who’s commented up to this point. But I’ll say what they’re saying more clearly: it’s a bit too difficult. I love the idea though.
xyzsparetimexyz•4h ago
No archive of previous games?
some_random•4h ago
Cool in principle, but I had an awful lot of trouble finding 7 letter words on the wordlist.
chrisweekly•4h ago
Wow this is pretty hard. I usually do well with word games, this one not so much. I may have just dodged being nerdsniped if I can just let it go.
ronbenton•4h ago
Think this needs calibration, it's way too hard!
snarf21•4h ago
The high/lo feels unintuitive to me .. Down on a P makes me thing R-Z not A-O.

I actually think left/right is a more clear visual and mental model.

I like the game and it is quite difficult sometimes to come up with a legal word that gives you an improved anchor point for the binary search.

SubiculumCode•4h ago
Fun game. The concept is good. However:

I couldn't find the go button for a while...finally realized it was part of the keyboard...that could be better

I don't get the colors on the keys, as intuitively it seems like it should be the available letters in the current position, but they don't change based on the letter spot I would be currently typing in.

I wanted to share my result with a friend who loves word games, but there was no share button. Also pasting the link does not come up with a web preview in slack/messengers.

It would be nice to be able to go back and play past days.

In terms of difficulty,hard but achievable. Might think on a difficulty slider, or a climb (first solve 5 letter, if won, 6, then 7?

mostly_harmless•4h ago
7 letter words are too long. I'm finding trouble thinking of any.
GordonS•3h ago
I really like this, it kind of reminds me of "Hangman"!

A few ideas, if you don't mind:

1. Have a "normal" mode and "master" mode, where the normal mode has words with maybe 5 letters and the master mode uses 7 letters

2. Have an archive of previous games - kinda sucks that I can't play the old ones!

3. Contrast on the up/down arrows on letters isn't clear enough, at least not for me (colour blind)

rbrodie•3h ago
I love word games and this was pretty fun. One recommendation I have is to have the most recently typed word at the top rather than the bottom, so that it's easy to reference when typing your next word. There could be plenty of reasons against that and I'm no game designer but that's what popped into mind. I'll definitely try more, this is a fun idea!
mNovak•2h ago
Definitely agree, I was very confused to see the latest guess (and with the most narrow letter ranges) at the bottom of the list.
troyvit•3h ago
I see a lot of people saying 7 letters is too long, but I feel like the additional hints about where to go when you guess wrong helps make up for that.

It took me a minute to get what was going on and I wasted a few guesses but I like that it requires a new strategy.

I was able to adapt my first go-to wordle words to 7 letters and realized that they should be different because of what you learn from guess to guess.

I suck at wordle and got this in like 7 guesses. Is your model to keep it on your site or do you plan to license the game?

SomewhatLikely•3h ago
Cool idea. This might be a time where an option to have an alphabetically ordered keyboard would be useful.

By the way, I like testing AIs on new games as they aren't in the training data and gpt5.6 sol high thinking was able to get from my second guess result to the correct answer. One letter was already locked and four more were down to a five letterish range. Still impressive as I remember models up until about the second generation of reasoning models really struggling with games like wordle.

Laurel1234•3h ago
Really cool. Everyone's given feedback about the length and such but mine is about the keyboard: it feels like the high/low/allowed colours should update as you go from slot to slot but they don't so it's pretty useless.
pimlottc•2h ago
Yeah, I don't really understand what it's showing me. If they are based on letter possibilities over the entire word, that's not very useful.
jszymborski•3h ago
Very clever! My main issue with Wordle is that it feels like it's largely a question of chance, but this one feels like there's a lot more strategy involved.
emaro•2h ago
There are strategies (especially if you know the word list). Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v68zYyaEmEA, highly recommended.
pimlottc•2h ago
The "up/down" arrows are a bit confusing, I don't think it's self-evident whether "later in the alphabet" would be considered "higher" or "lower".

"left" or "right" might be clearer, at least for English, and it would map directly to the range bar visualizations beneath each letter.

pimlottc•2h ago
Not to get a spoiler, but the post-game definition given for today's word (rot13: ybatrfg) uses an obscure secondary verb form instead of the much more common usage...
mNovak•2h ago
Noticed this as well. And the additional definitions under "explore this word" are all relating to the root word, not the actual form of the answer
albinn•2h ago
I'm very interested to know why 7 letters was deemed most appropriate, I could not come up with more than 2 words and had to get a dictionary to find.

Maybe I've played wordle too much...

vova_hn2•2h ago
I tried the game on mobile first and couldn't figure out the you are supposed to press "go". On my phone it looked just like all other buttons and was not highlighted in any way. Not sure if the reason is mobile browser or dark theme.
simonreiff•2h ago
Nice game -- a bit more of a challenge than the usual word games, so I appreciated it. I suggest including a little demo before the game starts to showcase how it works because it was slightly unclear how the game would work before the first turn. It also would be really nice to let users choose a difficulty level based on the length of the word. I might consider encapsulating all the numbers of the turns left, or even making it a flexible option that the user can lower in order to increase difficulty. The only other nit I noticed was that the dictionary seems to be returning the secondary meaning for the word today. Overall I really liked this game as it was genuinely different and the hi/lo nature added a very different dimension to the guesswork.

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