alt.hn

3/28/2025 at 12:25:00 PM

Claim for a missing tooth

 https://tf230.matteason.co.uk/

by lukecarr

3/30/2025 at 9:15:46 PM

Really glad everyone's enjoying this!

If anyone does use it with their kids:

a) There's a sneaky secret admin page linked at the bottom ('Change settings') where you can set a price-per-tooth and add a custom question for them to answer: https://tf230.matteason.co.uk/admin

b) Please send me a copy of their answers, I'd love to see their drawings! There's a download link on the confirmation page and you can email me at the bottom of the same page. Actually this goes for adults' drawings too because a few people have sent me theirs and they're hilarious

by matteason

3/30/2025 at 10:08:59 PM

Can't believe no-one else has made a comment about how great the form id "230" (tooth-hurty) is, yet. Bravo.

by Karellen

3/31/2025 at 12:57:23 AM

I hope that Peter, Caitlin and Leslie aren't reading this - if you are, STOP IT.

One of the minor villains in my D&D campaign is a literal living nightmare - one of three. Each one is named after a time of night when they appear, and this one is named 2:30 - because he really likes the nightmare where your teeth all fall out.

He's the spookiest one of them all, but the least dangerous.

by pavel_lishin

3/31/2025 at 12:35:28 PM

Is citizenship required for submitting a claim, as the instructions imply?

Also, the tooth chart is an adult chart (32 teeth), not a child chart (24 teeth).

by lupire

3/30/2025 at 8:34:40 PM

Neat idea!

This brings back an embarrassing memory from childhood.

Playing football in the yard, a careless neighborhood kid accidentally knocked two of my baby teeth out.

I remember scouring the grass for them to no avail, then getting in a rage about how I wouldn't get tooth fairy money, so punched the boy, and he started crying and ran home. I don't even remember who it was, but to this day feel bad about that.

When I got home, my parents said it's no problem, just write a letter explaining what happened and the tooth fairy will understand. And that worked.

Being a deviant, I decided to test it a few days later with another letter in secret, to no avail. And that was my first inclination this whole thing wasn't real.

by silisili

3/31/2025 at 8:14:47 AM

When I was a kid, I also tried the "small stone" trick under my pillow. (Of course, I announced it to my parents: "I'm going to see what happens if...") I think I got Monopoly money instead of real money. Still, it didn't dent my faith the Tooth Fairy.

by throwaway2037

3/31/2025 at 4:34:48 AM

The hubris in thinking the Tooth Fairy of all beings couldn't tell you didn't have any extra teeth missing...

by like_any_other

3/30/2025 at 9:48:58 PM

I think maybe you were using 'deviant' in a tongue and cheek way, but I think the way kids are naturally inclined to limit test and push boundaries in service of learning more about the world is among the most beautiful things in human existence.

Hopefully that's not the part of thr story you feel embarrassed about.

by jahsome

3/31/2025 at 12:45:42 PM

I don't know why you'd think that a fairy, with the power to fetch teeth from under your pillow and deposit payment undetected, and the power to monitor for for written letters that don't even emit denta particles to scan for, would lack a fraud unit.

by lupire

3/31/2025 at 8:59:51 AM

Oh god, I just put in a made up claim for a tooth lost in Timbuktooth, just to test the system and then I saw this...

  Knowingly making a false claim is a criminal offence under Section 17B(2) of the Teeth Finance & Renewal Act (1978) and you may be prosecuted, jailed, or blasted into space.
What do I do? What do I do?

by Lio

3/31/2025 at 9:05:29 AM

Okay, calm down, let's take this slowly. First things first: do you already own a spacesuit?

by matteason

3/31/2025 at 9:06:55 AM

Yes! They were on special offer in the centre isle of our local Lidl last week. Between the angle grinder and trombone section.

by Lio

3/31/2025 at 9:52:18 AM

Thank you for making my day just a little bit better. Excuse me while i clean my desk before the coffee stains ruin it. :)

by b3lvedere

3/31/2025 at 12:16:51 PM

This comment has brough me much joy! ...and, er, sorry about your desk. :D

by Lio

3/30/2025 at 6:54:01 PM

I like that you can select a wisdom tooth too. Adults having their wisdom teeth pulled out should absolutely use that website to file a claim.

by thih9

3/30/2025 at 10:55:52 PM

I’m confused. Traditionally, the Tooth Fairy pays for baby teeth, but the form shows numbering for permanent teeth.

Should there perhaps be a way to indicate the type of tooth and a chart showing numbering for baby teeth?

by amluto

3/31/2025 at 8:40:55 AM

There are some many kids with mesiodens and such that the diagram should also have little weirdly shaped bumps all around also. Also there shouldn't be an age limit for tooth fairies! I'm sure someone's great grandma would love the chocolate!

by xico

3/31/2025 at 7:40:25 AM

Is it bad that I was immediately jarred by the fact it doesn't use Transport Sans? Of course that is actually correct according to the GDS rules, because it's not on a service.gov.uk subdomain.

[1] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/styles/typeface/

by ascorbic

3/31/2025 at 7:44:27 AM

if i had to hazard a guess, that’s probably the exact response the design system is hoping for

by skavi

3/31/2025 at 9:18:08 AM

Should also incorporate "mind the gap" some how...

by donalhunt

3/31/2025 at 12:50:09 PM

Does the UK government have any enforce power to dissuade unofficial use?

by lupire

3/31/2025 at 1:02:23 PM

It's as much a licensing issue as anything I think. GOV.UK uses 'GDS Transport', which is a custom cut of New Transport, a commercially-available font [0] which is available for the low, low price of £10k per weight for unlimited impressions. I've never seen any enforcement though (doesn't mean it doesn't happen) and it's pretty common for services not on *.service.gov.uk to end up using it anyway

[0] http://www.newtransport.co.uk/

by matteason

3/31/2025 at 12:56:17 AM

This is very cool.

My daughter was very worried that she might lose her tooth and swallow it, so I told her that the sewer mermaids have an agreement with the tooth fairy, and they'd deliver the tooth to her, and then she would deliver the money.

My child didn't buy it, but maybe ya'll's will be more believing :p

by pavel_lishin

3/31/2025 at 1:18:37 AM

Sewer mermaids does strain credibility a bit, you have to admit. The human-scale rabbit which delivers gifts in eggs is far more credible.

by ocdtrekkie

3/31/2025 at 7:39:39 AM

Oh, I'd like you to know that there is (internationally at least - I know the US likes its anthros) very intense debate around the issue whether the Easter Bunny is a human-sized rabbit or just a very fast rabbit-sized rabbit strong enough to lift a basket. I've also at several times heard kids argue that there's more than one rabbit involved or that the Easter Bunny is assisted by his family.

There's plenty of prior art depicting rabbit-sized Easter bunnies painting and loading eggs onto baskets and most kids have heard of the idea of Santa Claus having a workshop staffed by elves so I guess it's no big leap (or hop?) to deduct that there must be more than just one bunny involved, although you can argue about the relative time cost of hiding presents in multiple places compared to having to sneak into a building.

by hnbad

3/31/2025 at 8:38:40 AM

Just for the confusion, in France, Belgium and areas around, it's bells, flying back from Rome, that bring chocolate to the children. The bells on churches fly there and are silent for some time and then come back on Easter with the sweets.

by xico

3/31/2025 at 2:06:59 AM

Funnily enough, just 30 minutes ago, my child accused me of lying to her about the Easter Bunny.

by pavel_lishin

3/31/2025 at 9:32:24 AM

I just went through the claim process and it explains that the sewer rats will be notified if you swallowed a tooth

by willvarfar

3/30/2025 at 9:38:40 PM

A little context for those who weren't aware: tooth-stealing ferrets are an ongoing, serious problem in Britain.

by benwerd

3/30/2025 at 9:48:56 PM

And not a single politician is addressing it. Shameful.

by matteason

3/31/2025 at 8:56:57 AM

I love how closely this matches how GDS built flows work, not just the visuals. The careful step by step pacing, the direct wording, it's all absolutely spot on.

Perfect.

by noneeeed

3/31/2025 at 9:06:59 AM

Thank you! I design GOV.UK (and GOV.UK-adjacent) services at work so this was a bit of a busman's holiday

by matteason

3/31/2025 at 11:00:24 AM

Aha, I did wonder. The language was just so spot on.

Keep up the excellent work.

by noneeeed

3/30/2025 at 10:16:02 PM

Suggestion: change the 'missing teeth' form line to include an ordinal count or something. I was surprised to learn when filing my form that I had "Missing teeth: 30"!

by gwern

3/31/2025 at 1:40:34 AM

Not fooled! The site is too fast and didn't require 16 factor auth to get started. It also didn't ask me for 5 different government identifiers. Nice try tho.

by blatantly

3/30/2025 at 8:54:34 PM

Very creative and well executed.

When I was like 6 a friend choked me and I swallowed my tooth. I was very sad because the tooth fairy ("ratón perez") would not pay me :(

But thankfully I found a note notifying me that they found my tooth and reimbursing me :)

So I see where the idea came from, but I wouldn't ever had imagined this bureocratic twist

by TZubiri

3/31/2025 at 12:03:40 AM

This note has horrifying implications. Did the tooth fairy go spelunking in your stomach and/or intestine? Are they sieving your sewer pipes for teeth just in case?

They must really want those teeth bad.

by egypturnash

3/31/2025 at 4:48:44 AM

It's less nefarious than that.

Every tooth contains a government-installed tracker.

by CoastalCoder

3/31/2025 at 7:04:18 PM

That's no more comforting to imagine. Possibly less so.

by egypturnash

3/30/2025 at 8:46:28 PM

Absolutely love the work done here! Only change I would make is change "rubber" to "eraser" to help more English speaking children understand the content (:

by Willingham

3/30/2025 at 8:54:48 PM

Since it's a spoof of gov.uk, "rubber" is correct!

by LeoPanthera

3/30/2025 at 8:58:56 PM

Oh god I knew this would be contentious

I've just changed it to 'eraser' but actually I should make it conditional on your navigator.language...

by matteason

3/31/2025 at 1:33:31 AM

I applaud your commitment to this bit. Thank you for making the world a nicer place.

by mbreese

3/30/2025 at 8:54:15 PM

Given the source of truth is British English, the maths says no.

by rob_c

3/30/2025 at 9:40:38 PM

Ooh! Perfect opportunity to ask a question I’ve definitely not spent an inordinate amount of time wondering about without bothering to look for an answer!

Is maths in British English plural? Like, should that be “the maths say”?

by cpfohl

3/30/2025 at 9:45:47 PM

It's always "maths" not "math" but we'd always say "the maths says" and I've never questioned it until right now

by matteason

3/30/2025 at 9:55:33 PM

It's still singular. Maths is just a contraction of mathematics, but without an apostrophe.

by timthorn

3/31/2025 at 5:07:12 PM

Thanks! Now I have more questions, but they're better. This is good progress.

by cpfohl

3/30/2025 at 9:54:14 PM

Just like "the science says" (but unlike "the English say" ;) ).

by speerer

3/30/2025 at 9:52:34 PM

Mathematics is uncountable (:

by chupasaurus

3/31/2025 at 6:08:30 AM

And dense!

by dullcrisp

3/31/2025 at 12:05:41 AM

Given the (highly memed) state of dental health in the UK it seems reasonable they would be responsible for this.

by avs733

3/31/2025 at 8:20:23 AM

As has already been pointed rubber is common British English, but perhaps more interestingly the etymology of name of the substance comes from this usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraser#History

by harripa

3/30/2025 at 9:46:40 PM

Even in Soviet textbooks for English in elementary schools (which are garbage by any standard) both variants were presented (:

by chupasaurus

3/31/2025 at 12:00:15 AM

I have a TEFL certificate (Teacher of English as a Second Language) and I'm a native speaker and avid reader -- and this was the first time I ever encountered "rubber" as a synonym for "eraser". The benefit of the latter term is it's unambiguous and easily understood.

by chrisweekly

3/31/2025 at 2:49:02 AM

I agree on eraser being superior.

I have an even weirder example from Russian language: file, folder and pocket are 3 out of dozen different words being used to describe a plastic envelope for documents in various regions and people don't understand each other. I remember only one more.

by chupasaurus

3/28/2025 at 2:10:20 PM

I made this, thanks for sharing it!

Backstory is here: https://bsky.app/profile/seamas.bsky.social/post/3lkigjm7sk2...

...and here: https://bsky.app/profile/matteason.me/post/3lknf6qfsek2p

tl;dr Séamas O'Reilly wrote a column in The Observer about faking a government reimbursement form for his son, who had swallowed a tooth and was worried about whether the Tooth Fairy would pay up if the tooth couldn't be put under his pillow. He published the form as a PDF (linked from the homepage) and I turned it into a digital service

Someone on Bluesky told me about our first successfully-fooled child yesterday: "I can confirm that form TF-230 worked flawlessly, and my cynical, streetwise 8-year-old son was utterly baffled by finding an envelope with his application form and a handful of coins in the letterbox this afternoon."

by matteason

3/29/2025 at 12:41:53 PM

Awesome, great job on the site! I saw it on the Slack, and was surprised at the level of detail in some of the pages like the tooth selection screen :D

It also got a good chuckle from those I shared it with at work! :)

by lukecarr

3/31/2025 at 12:04:46 AM

My hope, and the hope of the six other parent friends I just sent this to, is that this will still be up in a few years.

Made my and several friends evenings. Thanks.

by avs733

3/31/2025 at 4:14:56 PM

It's nice to see people treating real websites as something beyond SEO farms for users

by p3rls

3/30/2025 at 9:34:43 PM

This is remarkably adorable :)

Check the tooth colours in dark mode though, "white" is very much not white (it's black).

by rcambrj

3/30/2025 at 9:43:09 PM

Ah how have you set dark mode? I haven't got a dark theme via prefers-color-scheme or anything so whatever is setting it might just be brute-forcing white to black or something. I'll fix it if I can!

by matteason

3/31/2025 at 1:42:13 PM

I suppose they’re using https://darkreader.org/ or something like that!

If you implement dark mode yourself, you can add `<meta name="darkreader-lock" />` to prevent Dark Reader from triggering.

by notpushkin

3/30/2025 at 8:39:51 PM

How timely is this. Just minutes ago my child handed me a tooth to go under their pillow, then I find this.

by theginger

3/31/2025 at 3:33:27 AM

okay, I got fooled (by the coat of arms, primarily)

I truly thought UK gov did a joke to support children...

by NooneAtAll3

3/31/2025 at 1:19:16 PM

One day short of April's fools!

Or is it a timezone thing (The sun doesn't set over English empire, so no point waiting for tomorrow)?

Or, is this a real Government website and I am just being cynical?

by sam_goody

3/31/2025 at 6:30:26 AM

Looks super cute, but doesn't seem to work in Firefox on Android with uBlock Origin apparently only blocking CF Insights (clicking the big green button does nothing).

by ThePowerOfFuet

3/30/2025 at 11:27:44 PM

Gotta start 'em young on dealing with government bureaucracy.

by abalaji

3/31/2025 at 1:41:57 AM

If it doesn't cost $200 of your time to claim $12, what is government for?

by blatantly

3/30/2025 at 7:37:05 PM

This is really creative! Thanks for sharing!

by joshdavham

3/30/2025 at 9:33:29 PM

I love "wee" for a color choice, lol!

by krupan