Hacker News: almara

New comment by almara in "Show HN: Zanagrams"

almara — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 15:47:27 +0000

Fun! I like how the puzzle naturally gets easier as you solve it. How do you decide which words to include?

New comment by almara in "100 Jumps"

almara — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 08:16:19 +0000

Love the shifty eyes. Nice work!

New comment by almara in "Waller – Game that teaches the fundamentals of drystone walling"

almara — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 08:15:25 +0000

This is cool but please remove the fly buzzing noise!

New comment by almara in "Show HN: Word Snake Puzzle"

almara — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 08:17:46 +0000

Nice twist on boggle. Needs dark mode for me or will start to strain the eyes.

New comment by almara in "Show HN: Purple Word – A new word puzzle game"

almara — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 10:34:29 +0000

Actually on a second look the wordlist has 279,498 words. I think it was only partially loaded when I first checked.

That bumps the math to log₂(279,498) ≈ 18.1, so 19 guesses in the worst case and about 18 on average with perfect play

New comment by almara in "Show HN: Purple Word – A new word puzzle game"

almara — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 10:31:16 +0000

Interesting.

The word list / dictionary provided by the site only had around 170k lines so it must not be a complete version.

I would guess they have excluded some obscure words. I can't see anywhere in the information which dictionary is used.

New comment by almara in "Show HN: Purple Word – A new word puzzle game"

almara — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 10:08:58 +0000

Some interesting math here.

You’ve got ~170k possible words and a pure higher/lower signal, so with perfect play it’s just binary search. Number the words 1 to 170k, guess the middle, then keep halving the range. In binary terms, each guess is basically telling you whether the next bit is 0 or 1.

Since log₂(170,000) ≈ 17.4, you need at most 18 guesses. On average it’s a bit less: about half the words take 18 guesses, a quarter take 17, an eighth take 16, etc. So the expected number of guesses works out to 17.

All of that assumes you know the exact ordering of the dictionary, of course. Once you don’t, it stops being optimal and starts being human. That’s where the difficulty actually comes from.

New comment by almara in "Show HN: I made a math puzzle game"

almara — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 14:19:59 +0000

Inspired by wafflegame.net

Show HN: I made a math puzzle game

almara — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 14:19:30 +0000

Article URL: https://mafflegame.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41347488

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by almara in "Show HN: Waffle Shaped Math Game"

almara — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 08:21:06 +0000

Inspired by the Waffle word game (https://wafflegame.net/) I built a math version :)

Show HN: Waffle Shaped Math Game

almara — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 08:20:22 +0000

Article URL: https://mafflegame.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41308023

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by almara in "Show HN: My spin on a crossword-style game"

almara — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 20:41:37 +0000

Good point, thank you - I'll have a think about how to make it less annoying.

Re: the timer, whoops! I'll fix that asap.

Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for taking the time to give me feedback :)

New comment by almara in "Show HN: My spin on a crossword-style game"

almara — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 07:41:51 +0000

As a crossword lover, I’ve toyed with the idea of making a digital-first word game that combines clues to find hidden answers with linked letters.

This take allows for other features not present in traditional crosswords to be introduced, for example, different levels of difficulty (i.e. more letters paired = easier and viceversa) or having more flexibility when it comes to clue-making.

This is my first version, hope you like it!