Hacker News: qrush

New comment by qrush in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On?"

qrush — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 10:17:48 +0000

Still working on WORDTRAK, a Scrabble/Wordle esque game. I’ve got 25-30 people playing the daily game and trying to grow it!

I wrote about how I built the game’s dictionary and how hard the problem is: https://wordtrak.com/blog/2026-06-05-how-i-built-a-new-dicti...

The most surprising thing from the last month has been building a Discord app/activity has driven the most amount of engagement. Once it’s in your chat it tends to become a daily habit!

Give it a shot here: https://wordtrak.com/daily

New comment by qrush in "I built a new dictionary for pedantic word game players"

qrush — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 18:21:31 +0000

Dang or others, please ignore this - I had a bad URL slug and updated a few things! I can't figure out how to delete my own post...

74k words and CPUs playing ZOEAE: How I built a dictionary for word game pedants

qrush — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 18:15:10 +0000

Article URL: https://wordtrak.com/blog/2026-06-05-how-i-built-a-new-dictionary-for-pedantic-word-game-players

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48416207

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

I built a new dictionary for pedantic word game players

qrush — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 12:08:04 +0000

Article URL: https://wordtrak.com/blog/2026-05-28-how-i-built-a-new-dictionary-for-pedantic-word-game-players

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48411304

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by qrush in "12,060 piece, $799.99, Sagrada Família is the largest Lego building set to date"

qrush — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:10:18 +0000

It seems like this Lego set should also take 150+ years to build

New comment by qrush in "Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts"

qrush — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 02:33:55 +0000

We should grab coffee sometime, neighbor!

New comment by qrush in "Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts"

qrush — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 02:20:46 +0000

I’m around 8 miles west of Boston. I was playing on the floor with my daughter and had my ear to the ground- suddenly heard all of the windows shaking, the floor rumbled and an explosion louder than I’ve ever heard before.

Honestly what spooked me the most was seeing nothing on the horizon to help explain it! I am shocked and grateful it didn’t break any windows or cause further damage.

New comment by qrush in "GitHub Copilot App"

qrush — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 20:15:59 +0000

More evidence that GitHub is chasing features over stability of their platform.

New comment by qrush in "Ask HN: What Is the State of App Development in 2026?"

qrush — Sat, 30 May 2026 19:27:53 +0000

I've been dipping my toes back in after nearly 10 years away from native development.

I finally just got an Android app shipped to the Play Store for https://wordtrak.com, after several weeks of back and forth with what I am assuming are mostly robots managing the Google side of this. I was stunned to see how far Android distribution has come (and especially that all changes are now reviewed).

What I was most surprised by though, was all of the ridiculous red tape around the actual process of getting an app listed. Best example: I had to confirm I didn't change the outcome of the Korean War in order to list on Play Store in Korea.

In any case I got most of this done with Claude and expo.dev - it was a huge relief to let Claude Code churn through this and not have to worry about spending months re-learning frameworks and ecosystems.

New comment by qrush in "eBay Rejects GameStop's $56B Takeover as Not Credible"

qrush — Tue, 12 May 2026 17:27:10 +0000

I backed into my garage stupidly and broke my RAV4's side mirror. I found a guy in Japan who was selling the exact part I needed (the cover for the mirror matching my paint color), OEM for $50. It's like Craigslist but global on eBay. Never change.

New comment by qrush in "eBay Rejects GameStop's $56B Takeover as Not Credible"

qrush — Tue, 12 May 2026 17:25:42 +0000

I was selling NES/SNES games + boxes. After ~2 years of sporadic sales, I ended up just offloading them to a guy who has a huge used games outpost at a flea market.

I buy a mix of things: clothes, watches, and usually tiles from my favorite pottery in Michigan: Pewabic.

New comment by qrush in "eBay Rejects GameStop's $56B Takeover as Not Credible"

qrush — Tue, 12 May 2026 16:22:57 +0000

As a avid eBay customer I am pretty relieved. I buy 2-3 items a month and was selling for the last 2 years on the platform. It's come such a long way and is really a great, streamlined experience. Of course I'm sure folks that make their living off their stores & sales will have different opinions, but I'd say as a routine customer and seller it doesn't need an external company's takeover pressure on it.

New comment by qrush in "I want to live like Costco people"

qrush — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:37:43 +0000

I just got (at 38) a Costco membership this year, thanks to my in-laws gifting us a membership. There's another huge discount retailer here in Boston (BJs) that I have gone to for years, but Costco is another 10+ min drive away so I've resisted thus far. I will say... I'm still adjusting.

- No aisle signs or labels anywhere. I understand the retail strategy here but the lack of efficiency in MY experience kills me. Clearly they can't move the bakery, or meat department. But after ~5 visits I still have no idea where some basic products can be found.

- Who is buying a kayak, or shed while shopping for groceries?

- I continually make the mistake of going during the weekend when it is the most packed store on Earth. There were no less than 3 Cybertrucks in the parking lot.

I don't have the "must-buy" item yet, but every time I go, I feel like I need to take a nap after.

New comment by qrush in "Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak"

qrush — Thu, 07 May 2026 12:53:06 +0000

Thanks!!! I'd love ideas on sharing the end results...I went a bit overboard with the video recaps but that's not the best for simple text messages.

New comment by qrush in "Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak"

qrush — Thu, 07 May 2026 12:52:17 +0000

I was thinking about this too, especially since there's a literal "race" condition for who swaps first. Perhaps it would be fairest given the async nature to give each player their own bag. Great suggestion!

New comment by qrush in "Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak"

qrush — Wed, 06 May 2026 02:35:42 +0000

I’ll check it out on Firefox. I just got an Android around a week ago so haven’t tested it much there yet.

New comment by qrush in "Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak"

qrush — Wed, 06 May 2026 02:35:02 +0000

Thank you!!

New comment by qrush in "Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak"

qrush — Wed, 06 May 2026 02:34:37 +0000

Fair point! You can just play against the CPU and I had that as the default mode when signed out (you can still get to it after the daily game). I’ll think more on this!

New comment by qrush in "Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak"

qrush — Wed, 06 May 2026 02:33:25 +0000

One fun thing I learned here is that advertisers won’t even consider a site or game that’s not launched yet…not even Google AdSense would approve me. I am tracking this though and obviously want to make number go up.

New comment by qrush in "Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak"

qrush — Wed, 06 May 2026 02:32:16 +0000

Thanks! And yeah I’m definitely going to work on more polish and animations, this all needs a big pass on fidelity. Really appreciate this feedback.