wurdweb support

Hey! I'm Adriaan de Jongh, one of two devs behind wurdweb. Read through the known issues and FAQA below to see if it contains a fix or the answer you're looking for. If not, the bottom of this page tells you where to find my email address!

Known Issues

This section was last updated on: May 21st, 2022.

Game Center leaderboards entries still mention 'words' instead of 'points'

Due to a bug with the App Store's backend, we we're unable to programmatically change the word for your score in all languages and for all leaderboard. Because there are over 30 leaderboards each translated to 16 languages, changing this word manually isn't an option, and so we found ourselves stuck with the old word. We submitted a bug report to Apple and hope they'll fix it soon so that we can update the word.

Apple TV Siri Remote input stops working

This appears to be a bug in Unity, the game engine we use to make wurdweb, and we let the Unity developers know about this. It usually happens when double tapping the touch area to zoom in or out of the grid. A workaround for you is to kill and restart the game, which resets the input, and we inconveniently recommend not to 'double tap to zoom' too often while Unity developers fix this issue. FYI: you can kill apps on Apple TV by double clicking the 'screen' button on the remote, and then swiping upward when wurdweb is in the center of the screen.

Frequently Asked Questions, Answered

Is wurdweb receiving more updates?

Yes. We are both balancing development on wurdweb with other games, but you may stay tuned for updates with major and minor new features and bugfixes when necessary. See the changelog for past updates.

Words sometimes rotate as expected, but sometimes don't. Why not?

Rotating words is only explained implicitly in the tutorial because if it doesn't come natural to you it's actually quite complicated… but I can try to explain! When you're dragging a placeable word with your finger (or cursor) and your finger touches a word that's already placed on the grid, the placeable word rotates perpendicular to that word. So it's not about making the placeable word touch the word on the grid, but rather about making the finger that is dragging the placeable word touch the word on the grid.

We're still looking for a way to explain this to players without overwhelming them with the text above. If you have an idea, please reach out to me!

Why can't I create new words or append letters to words (like in Scrabble or similar games)?

This is an essential design decision of wurdweb. Practically speaking, wurdweb generates puzzles with certain parameters (difficulty, grid size, word count, etc) based on the words in 20 highly curated word lists we created, and this limits the possibility space just enough for our algorithm to run quick enough to allow generating the puzzles on your device. Would we allow people to append letters to these words, not only would we have to include a dictionary and decide what words are valid or not (which is a messy thing in and by itself), it would also make it impossible for us to generate potential solutions to the puzzles and determine their difficulty.

On a much more abstract level, Aran and I didn't want wurdweb to be about creating words. For me personally, creating words was always the stressful part about Scrabble-like games, as it relies on knowing a lot of words… which I admittedly do not! And even more frustrating do I find it when a game decides what is a valid word and what is not! I have often felt cheated by word games not accepting my words or accepting complete jibberish. wurdweb avoids these feelings altogether by not allowing you to creating words at all.

My Mac's mouse cursor doesn't show up! What to do?

When the game detects that a controller is connected to your device, it assumes you want to play with the controller. Just unplug the controller and the mouse will reappear.

Contact me

You can find my email address on my website: https://adriaan.games