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I think Zach Gage (developer of excellent games including Really Bad Chess, Spelltower, etc) says on Adam Conover's podcast that for many people they have difficulty improving at a skill when they have time (or other) pressure

Thus, he always includes a relaxed mode to let someone practice without any stress. Incidentally, he realized that some people only ever play in the relaxed mode!

Related: Great new Freakonomics podcast about why we do poorly under pressure[0]

[0] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/choking_radio/

The timer kills this for me too.

Maybe if it counted up I would be less annoyed by it. I like how the NYT does it with their crossword app. If you complete it under some threshold you get a gold star but there's no upper limit on the time.

The Zanagrams game, which AFACK is from the same developer (?), actually does this - it counts up like a stopwatch, then compares your time to the global average at the end.

I much prefer this way, personally at least.

Having a timer is maybe not so much the problem, but there's no reward here for doing early words quickly and no appreciation for the fact that difficulty is not linear. Would be nice if you could bank up some time for when harder ones come.

Yep, instead of feeling like a fun puzzle the timer just adds unnecessary pressure and gets me really annoyed.

My guy that’s the whole point of the game. Otherwise it’s too easy

You can still be competitive in "casual mode" using total time used to solve all the words.

Not everyone plays games for purposeless dumb challenges and difficulty. Games are supposed to be fun. Sometimes you just want to chill and engage the brain at a leisurely pace.

Yeah. It's just a walk to the mailbox for my brain.

> purposeless dumb challenges and difficulty

While I agree that for some people games with a time limit are not fun, I don't think the challenges and difficulty should be classified as "purposeless" and "dumb". For many the challenge/difficulty IS the fun part, and they serve a genuine purpose. If you don't like that, then play a different game, but that doesn't mean the game you don't like is useless.

Right. I don’t mean every challenge and difficulty is purposeless and dumb, just that those don’t have to be the goal, and that sometimes an easy game is what you want.

Tangentially, I have noticed some of the most well-balanced difficult games I have ever played were the ones with very granular difficulty settings. Examples include CrossCode and Celeste. Crypt of the Necrodancer too, though the customisation there feels like it crosses into too granular. In each I changed the difficulty settings exactly once, for optional challenges, and it made the games way more enjoyable.

I just want to chill... I have plenty of stress in my life already.

If unscrambling 6 letters is causing you stress..... word games might not be for you.

I like the core of the game and similar ones like Boggle. But agree for this the timer and having only one game per day makes this not enjoyable.

Not enough reward in the mechanics, I played about 50% of the archive games and each was the same. A feeling a frantic pressure and an inability to hit the 18 words every time (i.e. I lost)

Maybe I'm just too slow, but I feel like a good game should cater for players of mixed ability. This one seems stuck in pro / turbo mode and left me feeling frustrated - which is the only thing really thats stopped me bookmarking it or sharing with my family.

Edit to add - Boggle also has a timer and puts you pressure. But there's multiple paths through the grid which means your less likely to hit a brick wall and also allows for small side wins that help you along (e.g oh there's another three letter word when I am really looking for a 5 or 6).

> it would be to give me infinite time even if that meant my score came with an asterisk.

Or maybe don’t even keep score. That’s one of the features which makes be skip these daily games. Not every game needs to be a competition!

This reminds me of how my wife absolutely thrives on gamification and the social competition of things like Peloton, while they destroy 100% of my interest in the thing. We’re both intensely competitive people but in completely different ways.

I'd probably say there instead of a Challenge Mode and a Relax Mode like you said, it could just be a combined mode where there is a timer but after it goes out it simply continues the game on Relax Mode.

Or alternatively every word still has the timer and then at the end if you finish, it tells you how many words you completed under the timer and gives you a score based on that.

And then maybe an option for those who don't want the timer to show at all, since maybe it adds a bit of pressure. You can have just a simple option that removes the timer entirely from view

Another idea: maybe time how long you take for each word, and for the competitive among us, show stats on how long you took compared to everyone else, and a leaderboard for who took the least total time.

100% agree. Casual mode would be a winner.

Agree on the timer.

In one sense I really enjoy the timer up to the point that I lose, but it feels very unsatisfactory, especially if I lose early, & I'm acutely aware the difficulty level it's set at will be experienced radically differently by different players (to the exclusion of most I would imagine).

Having a timerless mode is very much needed as an option - there's no real risk of "cheating" with these cookie-based browser games anyway since I could just have infinite retries in a private tab if I felt like doing that.

I would appreciate the timer not turning red. It's better to be surprised that time's up, rather than be surprised to know it's running out.

Yeah I think this will be a bit too easy without a timer. But that ui does make it kind of intense, i forgot how to spell a basic word because i was thinking i only have 10 red seconds left

Yea, the timer is a little stressful though I understand the purpose/design behind it. I do like the suggestion of the no timer or a relaxed mode with.

PS anyone have any other fun, simple games like this and Zanagrams? I found https://maptap.gg/ recently and that also gives me the same Classic Web feeling that OP mentioned.

Yeah screw the timer. I can't work under pressure like that when it comes to word games. Maybe other people will enjoy that, but not me.

I’m a counselor at a day camp this summer, and we have Smart Boards in our rooms. I do some of the NYT games with the kids each morning (and then usually the smart board is off for the rest of the day).

I completely agree. If this didn’t have the timer (or maybe if it were counting up in the corner) it could be a great addition to our collection of games.

It seems so odd to me to have a word unscrambling game and have everyone shouting for the timer to be removed.

I grew up with this: https://youtu.be/UaOLkwtG-Ak?t=12 If anything it should be more intense and have music!

I actually kind of liked the timer. It gave me a sense of urgency and exhilaration! Word games have never been my favorite, but this has a different feel. But I can see giving the option to turn it off, and fine tuning the timed mode. Seems like some real potential here

I agree. The combination of one game per day, and a timer is not a great combo. Having a total time at the end would be a great way for people who want to compete on time, and for anyone else who actually wants to finish they can do that too.

It’s the same reason people will instantly close a site with unwanted animations (ads).

But if this game was called “Do A Word Puzzle While Being Distracted By Animated Numbers in Your Peripheral Vision”, that would be alright.

Same. Stopped after two words. Gave me the same feeling as taking a timed software developer screening.

I love the timer. It’s the closest game to ThruLine I’ve come across (that’s a compliment).

English is not my native tongue. If I had a relaxed mode, that'd be awesome :)

I will try out a game with a timer, but it will never be a keeper.

All games should have the option to have the timer turned off.

I regularly do cryptic crosswords (so this sort of game is in my wheelhouse). My goal is to complete the puzzle, not do so in a particular time. Completing it is often hard (depending on which paper I've picked up). There is no timer when I'm say with paper and pen, so it baffles me that every online newspaper cryptic has a timer on by default, and in some cases it can't be disabled.

It's also the thing that "ruined" the LinkedIn puzzles for me. They're generally fun puzzles, but timing it against my PB or - worse - people I'm connected to on LinkedIn just wrecks the experience. I opted out of leaderboards, because I don't really want to know a guy I worked with years ago trashes me at Queens every morning.

Strong agreement that a "relax" mode is needed here - at longer word lengths its becoming a test of recall and anagram ability, and that's fun in its own right. The timer just makes it a bit "meh", and I won't be returning as a result. Shame.

i like the timer.

BUT i'd like it if each round started with letters hidden and timer paused in case i need to step away and redirect my attention to something else.