Whatsit

Games

daily word game

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Whatsit

A word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?

whatsit.today

#word game#daily puzzle#anagram game#unscramble words

513points
248comments
#68of 3,837 in 2025
Top 2%of 2025 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

29 positive, 43 neutral or asking, 22 mixed, 53 critical, out of 147 comments about the project. Thread score -0.15.

Design: 8 for, 25 againstIdea: 8 for, 11 againstExecution: 0 for, 17 againstPerformance: 1 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Fun and polished UI

    From 3 comments
    • First off, I love the game. Your mom isn't just placating you. It is fun. Second, I think given all this advice a real clear example can be seen by looking at NYT's Wordle[0].…
      godelski on HN
    • It can be a slog to build and release a game like this, so well done on getting it out! Personally, I think it’s quite well polished UI wise. UX wise I guess keyboard input as…
      tlh on HN
    • I really like it (I play the NYT games daily). The UI is slick. As others have mentioned categories could probably have broader/non-US content but that's easy. The site/format…
      kylecazar on HN
  • Timer adds competitive fun

    From 2 comments
    • First of all, great game, just the kind I love. Personally, I love the timer. I can see varying opinions though. Perhaps a toggle for easy mode (no timer) or hard mode (timer,…
      rao-d on HN
    • So I actually like the timer and potential competitive aspect of it. If you want to lean into that, consider adding leaderboards and percentiles.
      kevinventullo on HN

Objections

  • Proper nouns like Catan should not be valid words

    From 4 comments
    • One small piece of feedback: typically these games do not allow proper nouns, because there’s too many of them. So having “Catan” be a valid word is pretty awful.
      moomin on HN
    • I like it, but here's my feedback: - let me use keyboard input - don't include proper nouns! I did't get catan because I wasn't expecting that - show the answers at the end.…
      ascorbic on HN
    • I think you shouldn't include proper nouns (like there's one in the Apr 6 solution).
      tuukkah on HN
    • My friend whos loves word games said she liked it. Asked for the link so I sent it along. Critique was that proper nouns should be removed as it caused a great deal of uncertainy…
      karpatic on HN
  • Valid words rejected as invalid, only one arrangement accepted

    From 4 comments
    • I like the idea but there were several examples where I found a word but it was not the word the game wanted, and I was told "invalid word". Examples: I found "STONE" but the…
      nisse72 on HN
    • is it intentional that one arrangement of the letters is correct when another, equally correct, arrangement is wrong? eg 'L L I P S' can be 'SPILL' or PILLS, but only PILLS is…
      niccl on HN
    • It was fun. Couple of suggestions: - It gave me “TCAAN” which stumped me. Afterwards I pasted it into the Internet Anagram Server, which failed to find any acronyms for it. So I…
      jamesdhutton on HN
    • I got the letters "AACNT" and even cheated online. The only word online dictionaries could make was "TACAN" and it wasn't accepted.
      y-curious on HN
  • Timer is stressful and off-putting

    From 3 comments
    • To tell you a brutal truth, I dislike any timed game.
      fl4tul4 on HN
    • I so hate timers. I left immediately. Sure, have a count up timer for those who what it, but make sure to allow it to be turned off permanently
      willf on HN
    • This is fun! I like the timing challenge but for many people this is a turnoff (there's a great interview with Zach Gage^ where he discusses research - some people are unable to…
      wrsh07 on HN
  • Too many plurals and puzzles too easy

    From 3 comments
    • Fun game but you should disallow plurals. Overall I’d say use the same word rules as Wordle. Almost all my words were plurals and so were uninteresting, but if that was fixed I…
      kdamica on HN
    • I would prefer if less plurals were used. Every word in my puzzle ended with an 's' as a plural.
      mrinterweb on HN
    • Pleasant and responsive lightweight design, but the game itself just has no difficulty to it. Tried four puzzles and all were done in 15 seconds.
      cgomez on HN

Requests

  • Add keyboard input

    From 4 comments
    • Quick UI suggestion: Let users playing on desktop type the letters.
      WoodenChair on HN
    • A few pieces of feedback from me: 1) Keyboard input would be really nice, especially playing on desktop 2) A "give up" button instead of a 5 minute timeout would be appreciated…
      angry_moose on HN
    • Nice game. Tedious to use on a laptop with a trackpad. You should allow keyboard input. Managing accounts is a huge headache both for yourself and for your users. It's a bunch of…
      derdi on HN
    • The limiting time factor for me was the clicking around on the page. Allowing keyboard input somehow would be a plus.
      pnm45678 on HN
  • Show answers after failing

    From 3 comments
    • Nice work! Would like to see what the correct result would have been for ones I didnt get after the time expires. Keep going!
      frankdenbow on HN
    • I agree, today's challenge was really easy. But I did enjoy the other days, I played all of them! What I'd like is an option to show the answers after failing (not by default, so…
      DistractionRect on HN
    • I like it, but here's my feedback: - let me use keyboard input - don't include proper nouns! I did't get catan because I wasn't expecting that - show the answers at the end.…
      ascorbic on HN
  • Add a start button and show instructions first

    From 3 comments
    • Just worked through a lot of the puzzles. I love the concept, and I also like how the timer doesn't reset when you switch between them. 3 pieces of feedback: 1. Since your time…
      spicybright on HN
    • Nice job! Pretty fun game. Only improvement ideas I have are for a smoother start for new players: 1. Let the user start the game themselves so that they have a chance to read…
      div3rs3 on HN
    • It should show instructions the first time, without prompting. I was just confused for a long time. The icons at the start and end of each row were distracting and confusing.
      stevage on HN
  • Allow turning off the timer

    From 2 comments
    • - love the concept, it was unclear at first how to delete a single letter when the button clears the whole word. - I see the comments about a timer but maybe the user can have…
      samg19 on HN
    • I so hate timers. I left immediately. Sure, have a count up timer for those who what it, but make sure to allow it to be turned off permanently
      willf on HN

Questions

  • How are the daily words chosen and is there automation?

    From 2 comments
    • Fun! I look forward to seeing what future categories and words are. Do you have to manually curate them each day? How big is your backlog? Is there a way to automate it?
      MattSayar on HN
    • Could you share how you pick each day's words?
      spicybright on HN

Alternatives named

  • Bracket City

    From 1 comment
    • A coworker and my wife and I have recently been really enjoying https://bracket.city which is a crossword-clue inspired word game with daily puzzles. It does take a little while…
      linsomniac on HN
  • Jumble

    From 1 comment
    • Cool - it's nearly a subset of Jumble, which I prefer because of the secondary mechanism of solving a pun to guess backwards.
      alanbernstein on HN
  • NYT Strands

    From 1 comment
    • This reminds me a lot of NYT strands, in the sense that it’s “multiple themed rounds of classic word game format X” In the strands example, the base word game is a word search in…
      jpjoi on HN
  • Sporcle

    From 1 comment

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