alt.hn

6/28/2026 at 3:26:14 PM

Show HN: Zanagrams

https://zanagrams.com/

by pompomsheep

6/28/2026 at 9:03:11 PM

The rules should probably explicitly mention the minimum length of four letters. (It's a reasonable rule; it just wasn't obvious from reading the info in "how to play")

by saghm

6/28/2026 at 4:50:38 PM

It’s basically Ribbit from Puzzmo, which is fine because reimplementations let you experiment with different gameplay.

https://www.puzzmo.com

by jasonpeacock

6/28/2026 at 5:02:07 PM

Came here to say this, Ribbit is a lot of fun, and Puzzmo in general is a really solid site.

by abound

6/28/2026 at 8:51:35 PM

Good game. I did not think I was going to be able to make it.

Zanagrams #5 Complete in 11:23 https://zanagrams.com/

by mmvvaa

6/28/2026 at 7:32:00 PM

I'm stuck. Does that mean I chose the wrong word earlier and used up an essential letter? Does the sequence of word guesses matter? Is there an Undo feature so I can back up and try a different order of guesses? Can I get a hint? Is there a way to give up and see the solution (order of word guesses)?

by acrophiliac

6/28/2026 at 7:39:50 PM

You're not stuck, the board only removes letters and connections that are not used by any other word (probably excluding "bonus words"). So the word(s) you're missing are still on the board.

No hint feathre though, the hints are the letters going away. You'll probably have to use a scrabble search or something.

by pfg_

6/28/2026 at 7:59:06 PM

Gemini can solve them if you need a hint or want to give up and see the solution.

by blfr

6/28/2026 at 8:13:32 PM

You should add a scoreboard! I got zanagram #5 in 3 minutes and 53 seconds. Also found two bonus words

I thought I was slow but now I see others took 10 minutes and 20 minutes! Maybe I'm not so slow!

Zanagrams #5 Complete in 03:53 https://zanagrams.com/

by azeirah

6/28/2026 at 8:53:08 PM

wow, that was fast. it took me 11+, but found 7 bonus ones.

by mmvvaa

6/28/2026 at 8:32:30 PM

Great game! I really like how it removes any possible letters or connections. I managed to finish two zanagrams without any wrong answers. It’d be great if there was a way to gain a “perfect” score.

by bbx

6/28/2026 at 7:28:00 PM

Nice game! I found 20 words.

I was a bit stunned by the concept of "bonus words". I found that every word should count. Also because some words are just plural forms (e.g. stroke+s), so kinda cheep?!

Keep ups the good work!

by dpfu

6/28/2026 at 7:57:38 PM

I think the board (and disappearing letters) are made with a list of words in mind. Thus, to complete the puzzle (dissolve all letters) you cannot count the bonus words as they were not accounted when creating the letter graph.

by frotaur

6/28/2026 at 7:11:12 PM

This is so much fun. And something while playing reminded me of a this video I saw where someone asks her boyfriend "what does Y-E-S spell", and he said "yes". Then she asked him what "E-Y-E-S" spelled, and he couldn't figure it out (he kept saying "eee... yes?"). Anyway, I was looking at the remaining letters with just one word left to go. Four of them formed a word I had already guessed, plus one letter, but didn't make any sense with that additional letter. Until it did. I won't spoil which was it was, but it was in puzzle #1.

by wkjagt

6/28/2026 at 8:11:54 PM

The only thing I would add would be to keep track of the words already found.

by Cyclone_

6/28/2026 at 8:26:18 PM

It’s there, click on “words”

by jgilias

6/28/2026 at 5:46:28 PM

Pretty fun, took me about 10 minutes but found 24 words 10 of them bonus. This was #5 for future viewers.

Edit: welp, spent another 15 mins and managed to solve the previous 4. Currently whipping up a custom version for myself that gives a new set of words related to a theme on each solve, love it.

by iKlsR

6/28/2026 at 9:13:44 PM

Fun game, managed in just over 3 min. How are people taking so long...?

by jmpavlec

6/28/2026 at 7:51:29 PM

Zanagrams #5 Complete in 22:17

https://files.catbox.moe/fgmb4b.jpeg

Super fun, i found a tons of words and the last 3 ones were really hard to find

by brtsml

6/28/2026 at 8:41:59 PM

Very nice! I solved them all in the backyard on a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

by abnry

6/28/2026 at 6:54:13 PM

Great puzzle! Is there a way to give up and see all the answers? After 20 minutes or so still have 8 words to find. (Not a native English speaker.)

by iku

6/28/2026 at 4:21:29 PM

Cool game. Snus isn't in the word list btw

Found six bonus words.

by NDlurker

6/28/2026 at 6:22:54 PM

Cool that they list the definitions of the words afterwards. This makes it even more fun for non-native speakers, as it adds a free learning aspect to it.

by ctenb

6/28/2026 at 8:26:19 PM

Cool game! Definitely needs the bonus words counter in the shareable results snippet.

by shrx

6/28/2026 at 6:49:01 PM

Simple and fun, appreciate the definitions! Was wondering about ideas for creating a simple game using the vocab list from my koreader app, but will probably need to be a crossword type game where I need to match definitions with words. This just reminded me of that :)

by a-l-e-c

6/28/2026 at 3:47:27 PM

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

by almara

6/28/2026 at 3:49:35 PM

Thanks. I use a combination of AI to first score the words by obscurity and then manually decide which ones to include based on this score and my own judgement.

I then manually test each of the puzzles and throw out any that I feel weren't "fun" to solve for whatever reason

by pompomsheep

6/28/2026 at 7:48:26 PM

Fun game. I found had trouble seeing the color contrast, so I modified the connection color by updating the CSS for .root.tile to #aaffff

by veganjay

6/28/2026 at 6:46:13 PM

Love how the connections disappear once the letter is used up. Feels progressive

by ggaswint

6/28/2026 at 7:55:15 PM

Love this! Added to bookmarks. Wish it had a counter for bonus words so I know if I missed them.

by heystefan

6/28/2026 at 5:05:20 PM

the score should include how many bonus words you found (out of how many there were in total) and instead of time it should count how many tries you made because technically you could brute force this and try all combinations. counting each try would eliminate that (for anyone trying to get a high score)

by em-bee

6/28/2026 at 4:20:46 PM

I like that it also handles words that aren't planned in. You get a nice "bonus word" popout.

by blfr

6/28/2026 at 4:31:02 PM

Yeah, I got "TUNS" as a bonus word.

by msla

6/28/2026 at 5:56:39 PM

Yeah tuns (a word well known to homebrewers) is not as esoteric as yttria (a word known to.. chemists?)

by philsnow

6/28/2026 at 5:08:26 PM

Not sure how to vote for it, though.

by smitty1e

6/28/2026 at 6:12:03 PM

Cool game! Well that’s a sign I need to launch my word game this week if any

by purple-leafy

6/28/2026 at 4:31:30 PM

Interesting game! Is this an original idea? Is there plan to add "endless" number of zanagrams?

by urostrstenjak

6/28/2026 at 6:24:39 PM

Feels very like Squaredle.

by moomin

6/28/2026 at 5:51:28 PM

pretty cool. how are you deciding or generating puzzles ?

by mateenah

6/28/2026 at 4:52:56 PM

[dead]

by aevv

6/28/2026 at 7:15:58 PM

[dead]

by rd3i