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Tiled Words merges tile-placing board game mechanics with crosswords. You rotate and rearrange tiles to find clues and rebuild a broken crossword. Every day there's a new themed puzzle for you to solve.
The game is web based: the graphics are SVGs, animations are powered by CSS, and Vue/Nuxt are used to power templating, reactivity, and routing. Most of the complex logic lives in TypeScript modules. The whole thing is responsive.
It's been a long time in the making. I started the first version in the Summer of 2024. The game was originally inspired by board games like Patchwork. I wanted to make a digital game where you placed tiles on a board. I explored layering a few different game mechanics on top of that but none of my prototypes felt fun to play, so I shelved the idea around September 2024. (At its most complex, I was developing a deck-building game about planting flowers to heal a broken land.)
This July while on a hike with my wife I had an idea: what if I put letters on the tiles and let you rotate and place them to build words. I whipped up a prototype and actually enjoyed playing it. Even better, my friends thought it was fun too. I was convinced to keep going when I shared it online and got a lot of positive feedback from strangers.
Since launch I've had several hundred people visit the site every day, and around ~350 people finish the daily puzzle every day. I've gotten a lot of sugI'm hoping to share this with a larger audience since people seem to enjoy it.
It's been a lot of fun to design and develop. I enjoy working with my wife to build new puzzles. (She's better at thinking of the clues than I am!) Please share it with your friends and check back tomorrow for a new puzzle!
(I hope it's okay that I'm sharing this again. Last time I tried, it didn't get much engagement but the people who did comment seemed interested.)
This random guy enjoyed solving the daily puzzle. Well done!
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it
Great job, really enjoyable!
One tiny nitpick; The absolute gulf between the practice puzzle and the first daily is a bit much imo.
Thanks! That’s great feedback.
Do you think I should add more intermediate practice puzzles?
Or make the existing practice puzzle harder?
Or reduce the complexity of the dailies?
Good question. I like the complexity of the daily, and the practice puzzle is simple enough to be a good introduction to the game mechanics, so maybe an intermediate puzzle (possibly optional?) might be a good idea? Just don't want to bore people to death, I know some will want to get straight to the daily.
That makes sense. Thanks!
I really enjoyed this game and will try it again tomorrow.
I can definitely see the inspiration from hobby tile games and polyomino games. I design a lot of card and board games but generating a new daily puzzle sounds daunting to me! :)
Thanks!
Creating a new puzzle daily is a lot of work but it has also been fun!
My wife suggested this concept and I put it on my ideas list. Well done, you bastard.
Haha you’ve got a smart wife. Thanks!
This is amazing! Very well done, very entertaining game.
Feature request: Please create an apple TV app for this. I'd love my kids to play this on the TV together. I'd pay for this.
Interesting! Does Apple TV have a web browser? I’d be curious if it would work there