Hints for everyone, and tools for a friendlier community
WyldTyle used to have two modes. Easy mode gave you hints; Pro mode did not, and only Pro scores counted on the leaderboard. As of this update the modes are gone. Every game has hints available, every game counts, and you decide whether to press the button.
Why we dropped the modes
The split seemed sensible when we designed it. Players who wanted a pure vocabulary test could have one, and players who wanted a helping hand could have that, and the leaderboard would stay honest. In practice it produced a worse game for both groups.
Easy-mode players felt their games did not count, and many of them stopped playing rather than switch to a mode they found frustrating. Pro-mode players were staring at a slot reading S _ _ _ E R with an obvious word they could not quite see, with no way to look, and rage-quitting instead. Meanwhile the leaderboard was small, because most people were playing the mode that did not feed it.
We also noticed that hints do not actually make a game easy. Knowing forty words fit a pattern does not tell you which roll to call or where the next K should go. The hard decisions in WyldTyle are about roll selection, wild placement, and the trade, and a hint button touches none of them.
How hints work now
Once a word is more than a third filled, a question-mark button appears beside it. Tap it and you see valid words that fit the letters already placed. There is no penalty and no limit. If you would rather play on vocabulary alone, ignore the button; nothing changes in the game if you never press it.
Reporting and blocking
The same release added two tools for the social side of the game. From any player's profile you can now block them, which hides them from your friend search and prevents them from sending you invites. You can also report a display name or avatar that breaks the rules; reports go straight to us and we act on them.
We hope these get little use. WyldTyle's community has been remarkably civil, but a multiplayer game with friend requests needs the tools before it needs them, not after.
Smaller changes
- The Play Solo card on the home page gained a one-line description and lost a blurb nobody read.
- On the upgrade page, Restore Purchase now sits directly under Buy Now, and a failed purchase tells you why instead of silently doing nothing.
- The word list's provenance is now documented. It is the public-domain ENABLE lexicon, trimmed to the letters the dice can produce.