You win by finding an 8-letter word before the time runs out

September 14, 2024 3:41 PM

Do you like the New York Times' Spelling Bee? Try Eightile for a [timed] variant, in Spanish or English.
posted by chavenet (26 comments total)

That was fun! I did it in 245 seconds. The 4th word was the hardest for me.
posted by Redstart at 4:07 PM on September 14 [1 favorite]

285 seconds for me but about 20 seconds were used to read how to play. The fifth word was hardest for me. Good stuff, chavenet, thanks for posting!
posted by ashbury at 4:29 PM on September 14 [1 favorite]

This makes me remember how much worse I am at timed tests than untimed. Once the clock ticked below one minute left on the eight letter word, my brain left my body. On the second try with less pressure, I got it right away.
posted by mai at 4:33 PM on September 14 [4 favorites]

I tried Spelling Bee but got so frustrated by their refusal to acknowledge “vail” as a word despite it seeming exactly like a NYT type of word!
posted by corb at 4:45 PM on September 14 [1 favorite]

Delightful, a new daily for me, thank you! More word games need to be in multiple languages.
posted by criticalyeast at 4:49 PM on September 14 [2 favorites]

147. I used to do Spelling Bee but it was too much of a time sink. This is better.
posted by djnnnou at 5:27 PM on September 14 [2 favorites]

This is a good opportunity to remind everyone of WordSplay, formerly Weboggle, posted here under that name way back in 2004, and originally created by our own plutor!
posted by JHarris at 6:07 PM on September 14 [3 favorites]

This was fun and challenging—220 seconds.
posted by Scout405 at 6:53 PM on September 14 [1 favorite]

Agh! I got the last one with just not quite enough time to type it in! I also hate timed tests, but I think I need the practice at remaining sane under pressure, so I’ll keep at this one.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:28 PM on September 14 [1 favorite]

132 seconds. This is fun
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 9:46 PM on September 14 [1 favorite]

I'm the creator of Eightile, thanks so much for trying out this game. I'm glad you all enjoyed it! I totally understand the love-hate relationship with the timer, I just wouldn't want this game to be too big of a time sink for anybody.
posted by alexandermorgan at 12:36 AM on September 15 [22 favorites]

I solved today's Eightile in 132 seconds!

(donno when the cutover is, so unclear if my time is comparable to the others upthread)
posted by pwnguin at 1:43 AM on September 15 [1 favorite]

I solved today's Eightile in 199 seconds!
🟥🟩🟧
🟥🟧🟩🟦
🟧🟥⬛🟩🟦
🟥🟧🟩🟦🟪⬛
🟨🟥🟧🟩🟦🟪⬛
🟫🟥🟧🟨🟩🟦🟪⬛

This game is more interesting than wordle because it plays with all the different possibilities with a certain type of letter cluster and makes you do the cognitive work of either ignoring them or moving toward them as letters are added. Forces you to broaded a more limited range of guessing strategies. The timer is nice because, tbh, it forces focus, and half the time I look at an nyt game (wordle, spelling bee, connections), I'll just put it down for whatever reason.
posted by Hume at 7:00 AM on September 15 [3 favorites]

280 seconds for me today. I totally got stuck on the last word.

I don’t typically stick with daily games but the fact that I came back today is promising! alexandermorgan , fun game, thank you! I love the timer, by the way.
posted by ashbury at 7:05 AM on September 15 [2 favorites]

I got it in 92 seconds, but I cheated. I started in the grocery checkout line, got stuck on the five-letter word, turned off my phone, figured out the word when I was walking to the parking lot, and then finished on my computer about an hour later. So my real time was probably about a minute longer.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 7:16 AM on September 15 [1 favorite]

alexandermorgan, thanks for this game. It was fun, and I've shared it with my wordle group.

I'm curious if there are enough English words that cascade in non-obvious ways to make the game sustainable. Do you have a sense of that?
posted by Winnie the Proust at 7:21 AM on September 15 [3 favorites]

105 seconds today, but today I think may be easier than normal once you get the trick.
posted by corb at 8:31 AM on September 15 [1 favorite]

I solved today's Eightile in 115 seconds!
🟥🟩🟧
🟥🟧🟩🟦
🟧🟥⬛🟩🟦
🟥🟧🟩🟦🟪⬛
🟨🟥🟧🟩🟦🟪⬛
🟫🟥🟧🟨🟩🟦🟪⬛
posted by signal at 9:38 AM on September 15 [2 favorites]

One detail, the 'I solved.." could be seen as a spoiler for people who haven't done it yet.
posted by signal at 9:39 AM on September 15 [2 favorites]

I solved today's Eightile in 105 seconds!
🟥🟩🟧
🟥🟧🟩🟦
🟧🟥⬛🟩🟦
🟥🟧🟩🟦🟪⬛
🟨🟥🟧🟩🟦🟪⬛
🟫🟥🟧🟨🟩🟦🟪⬛

Thanks--fun! Also, for any fans of the gloriously mindless Vertex, I made two discoveries today:
https://helloworld-1839.github.io/vertex/
https://www.nodes-game.com/

Now off to be soundly drubbed by Daily Alice in Guess my word.
posted by Don Pepino at 10:21 AM on September 15 [4 favorites]

Winnie the Proust asked how many days of games there are for Eightile in English. I'm not totally sure, but I made a list of about 50k 8-letter words and I wrote a program that generates valid games from those 8-letter words. It's not always possible, like for the most common 8-letter word in English, "although", in that case there's just no 7-letter word from those letters. But the bigger problem is games that work but with words that nobody would recognize. This game is hard enough as it is, so I try to stick to more common words so it's at least playable. I do keep some of the harder ones for the weekends though, like the crossword. I'm only able to use about 20% of the 8-letter words, but that's still about 10k or 30 years of 1-per day. You could also take a different path to the same 8-letter word.
posted by alexandermorgan at 10:31 AM on September 15 [8 favorites]

Related: 23 Words, a timed anagrammer limited to, well, you guessed it.

The 23words.com URL was having some issues recently but it seemingly owed to a malfunctioning redirect and SSL cert for the domain, so may be working again. In any event, you can use wordnerd.co for it and several other word games.
posted by criticalyeast at 2:38 PM on September 15 [2 favorites]

44 seconds!!!
posted by ActionPopulated at 5:29 PM on September 15 [5 favorites]

Well I solved today's in 18 seconds, so I guess they start out easy on Monday and get progressively harder (hopefully)
posted by the bricabrac man at 8:46 AM on September 16 [1 favorite]

Pony request: The game should track my results or, at the very least, remember that I've solved the game today.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 9:21 AM on September 16

Hi "It's Never Lurgi", the game does track that you've played today, and uses this information to show you your winning streak at the end of the game. It even tracks different winning streaks in English and Spanish if you play in both languages.
posted by alexandermorgan at 9:42 AM on September 16