use different dictionary?

[marwahaha]

Hi, I found this game via Hacker News and I really like it.

One thing I found frustrating is list of allowed words -- certain ones like 'dox', 'tase' were not allowed, but many interjections ('er'), two-letter solfege ('ti'), and abbreviations ('en', 're') were allowed, and other ones I've never heard of ('erk')

Is this behavior intentional? I'm finding it hard to get used to coming from other word-based games (NYT Spelling Bee). Granted, I guess I'm a bit frustrated because knowing your two-letter words is much more valuable to play this game compared to others.

[bglw]

👋 Thanks for the kind words!

Is this behavior intentional?

Somewhat! Or, it is at least intentional that the wordlist is more restrictive than other word-based games. Truncate has its own dictionary that does still need some curation, but the goal is to round out this dictionary rather than move to another.

The base is a classic word-game dictionary (wordnik's wordlist), with many of the more obscure or archaic words removed. We were intentionally a little over-zealous with the removals, with the thinking that it is less jarring going forward for us to add words than it is to have words removed from play.

We found that using the full international word game lists that would normally apply to a game like Scrabble is particularly frustrating for Truncate. In Scrabble, playing an obscure archaic words like CH or OO isn't particularly punishing to your opponent beyond points, but such a word in Truncate can cause you to lose your whole board in an attack. Since it's a lot more frustrating in Truncate's case, we're intentionally taking a more modern subset of English.

Ultimately, any dictionary will be an arbitrary subset of English that will be frustrating for a range of players, so I don't think there is a best answer here.

That's the background at least! Keen to hear your thoughts given that context 🙂

[marwahaha]

Hi, thanks for your clear response. Maybe I have less experience with word games using 2-letter words, but considering solfège and interjections as valid feels a little weird to me. In general I agree that it is better to remove words that are archaic or obscure, especially if the word is 2 letters.

Maybe there is a technological solution: whenever a word is valid, could it be lightly highlighted in green? Or if a word is invalid, in red? It would be nice if the player had a visual indicator on the board which words were or were not valid. Most of my dictionary frustrations are a reaction to surprises during game play.

[bglw]

We are planning to do some work along those lines, so that will help :)