Hi all, thank you so much for playing Topicle this past week. The level of attention and consistent playership is far more than I was anticipating, and it always feels good to release a project people enjoy using.
You can see all the code that put this together
on GitHub. The game itself is powered by almost 400 custom puzzles devised by myself and my friends, ranging in self-assigned categories like History, Science, Fiction, and Synonyms. The puzzle order was then randomized using some simulated annealing to spread out the categories; about 60 puzzles, though, have a fixed date assigned to them, ensuring they appear on particular "topical" days.
The list of accepted words is quite a bit larger than Wordle's since the game has so many proper nouns as answers. This was solved by selecting from a corpus of every word used on Wikipedia, sorted by frequency. The required number of appearances of an accepted word is somewhat arbitrary, but chosen to be a bit below the least common answer. This ensured that just about every reasonable guess was at least accepted, though of course includes some nonsense as well.
There is also expressed interest in playing old puzzles; the site is setup to cycle annually, with a little bit of movement to account for shifting holidays, so you will (eventually) get the chance! However, depending on playership in the future, I may bite the bullet and provide a slough of puzzles at once. And yes, there is a February 29th puzzle.
Again, thanks a ton for playing. Suggestions and bug reports are continually appreciated.