Show HN: Wordit – A mashup of a word game and a card game | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Wordit – A mashup of a word game and a card game

wordit.app

4 pointsstack_framer3 comments

I don't want to use the web app; I want to read the rules of the game, in a plain HTML or text file (that I might print out if wanted), without scripts (CSS is probably not needed either, but if it isn't too big, it isn't a problem, since it can be disabled if it is problematic).

Many web pages will show nothing if scripts or disabled, or only display "Please enable JavaScripts"; this is a bad idea. Explain what it is. Link to documentation if it is available. I have seen one web page that did this; it did link to documentation when scripts are disabled, so that you can read how it is working. Unfortunately, they didn't do it properly; the documentation itself required scripts to work.

The rules are outlined on an FAQ page that requires JavaScript; however, I will provide the rules here for your perusal:

  1. Round 1 begins as both players receive 3 cards from their decks and 10 random letters.
  2. Player 1 optionally plays one or more cards, then plays a word with one letter on the board's center square.
  3. Player 1 receives points for all words played. The number of points may be affected by any cards in play.
  4. Player 1 receives new letters (as many as were played).
  5. Player 2 takes a turn in similar fashion: optionally playing one or more cards, playing a word, then receiving points and new letters.
  6. The game advances to round 2 and the players draw a card from their decks.
  7. The game continues round by round as the players take turns playing cards and words.
  8. The game ends when either of the following occurs during or after the 15th round:
    (a) Player 1's score at the end of their turn is less than player 2's score (i.e. player 2 doesn't need a final turn).
    (b) The scores are not tied after player 2's turn.

I've liked word games for as long as I can remember. My mom was adept at crossword puzzles, and she introduced us to classics like Scrabble and Boggle. It's still a family joke that she only won at Scrabble because she played "crossword-puzzle words"—crazy words that we had never heard of, and that we challenged, but that were always in the dictionary! As my vocabulary improved and I got better at Scrabble, I noticed a few quirks in the gameplay that occur with some regularity:

1. The board often becomes cramped—especially in its bottom right quadrant. This is understandable, because valid words must go from right to left or top to bottom, but I began to wonder if there was some way to fix this.

2. It's not uncommon to get stuck with all vowels or consonants. This is particularly painful because your only recourse is to exchange letters and forfeit a turn. I found myself wishing there were different options for exchanging letters, and I wondered if there was a way to never get stuck with all vowels or consonants in the first place.

3. The same small words appear in almost every game. This is due in part to the fact that you draw from a fixed set of letters in every game. For example, there's only one J, Q, X, and Z, and there are only two blanks, so it's impossible for the words PIZZA and JAZZ to ever be played in the same game—the letter Z can appear at most three times in a game. Another reason for the lack of word variety stems from the fact that each player only has 7 letters to work with. There are approximately 56,000 valid words composed of 2-7 letters. I know this because I've paid for a license of the 2020 edition of the North American Scrabble Players Association dictionary. In contrast there are about 87,000 words composed of 8-10 letters, so having 10 letters at your disposal would more than double the number of potential words you could play!

I remember being pretty excited when I first heard about Words With Friends. It had a lot of hype, and I was hopeful that it had solved some of the quirks of Scrabble. I was disappointed to discover that it was basically just a clone. Yes, the squares on the board had been shuffled around, and some letters were worth more or fewer points, but there was basically zero innovation. The board still gets cramped, you still get stuck with all vowels or consonants, and your vocabulary is still limited. At some point I decided I'd had enough, and I set out to solve these problems with my own word game.

Wordit is the result of this effort.

Wordit combines the gameplay of traditional word games with a deck of cards that help you make every turn count. I think of it like a cross between Scrabble and Magic: The Gathering. Wordit has rules of course, and they're familiar to anyone who has played Scrabble or Words With Friends, but the cards in Wordit allow you to bend just about every one of those rules. You can play a word that is not connected to other words. You can exchange letters in various ways without forfeiting a turn. You can play a word that's horizontally or vertically backwards. You can even play defensively by removing a square from the board or reducing your opponent's best letter to 1 point.

If you like word games, please give Wordit a try, and feel free to start a game with me (my display name is Rob). Note that Wordit is a progressive web app, so you can play it right in your browser (and you can "install" it on mobile or desktop for a more native feel).

I'm open to any and all feedback!

Thanks, Rob

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