Ordjagten: The Word Hunt Challenge

An innovative word game powered by AI word embeddings

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Reinventing Word Games Through AI

In a digital landscape filled with conventional word games, Ordjagten (Danish for “The Word Hunt”) stands apart by leveraging advanced computational linguistics to create a uniquely challenging and intellectually stimulating experience. Unlike traditional word games that rely on dictionary definitions or simple letter arrangements, Ordjagten employs AI-powered word embeddings to measure the semantic distance between words, creating a game of conceptual proximity rather than just vocabulary.

The Challenge

Word games typically suffer from several limitations:

  1. Predictability: Most follow established patterns that become repetitive
  2. Limited Learning Value: They rarely introduce players to new vocabulary relationships
  3. Shallow Engagement: Many games rely on chance rather than cognitive reasoning
  4. Lack of Social Competition: Few games effectively integrate friendly competition into the experience

The Ordjagten Solution

Ordjagten addresses these challenges by creating a daily word guessing game that uses advanced linguistic models to transform how players think about language and word relationships.

Key Features

Innovative Gameplay Mechanics

The core gameplay revolves around an elegant yet challenging concept:

  • Each day presents a new target word to discover
  • Players submit guesses and receive feedback on how semantically close they are to the target word
  • The proximity is calculated using FastText word embeddings that represent words as vectors in multi-dimensional space
  • The game rewards both vocabulary depth and understanding of conceptual relationships between words

Social Competition Elements

Ordjagten enhances the gaming experience through social features:

  • Add friends to your network
  • View daily scores and historical performance of friends
  • Compare your solving approach with others
  • Optional anonymous play for those who prefer privacy

Secure Authentication

The game provides flexible authentication options:

  • Secure Google authentication for a seamless login experience
  • Anonymous play for those who prefer not to create an account
  • Persistent game state across devices when logged in

Responsive Design

Ordjagten is built with modern web technologies to ensure:

  • Fully responsive design that adapts to any screen size
  • Optimized experience for both mobile and desktop platforms
  • Intuitive touch controls for mobile users
  • Clean, distraction-free interface that focuses on gameplay

Technical Implementation

FastText Word Embeddings

At the core of Ordjagten’s unique gameplay experience lies its use of FastText word embeddings:

  • Created by Facebook’s AI Research lab, FastText represents words as vectors in a 300-dimensional space
  • Words with similar meanings appear closer together in this vector space
  • This allows the game to calculate meaningful semantic distances between words
  • The implementation handles both common and rare words effectively

Modern Web Stack

The game is built using a robust and modern technology stack:

  • Frontend: SvelteKit for a highly responsive and interactive UI
  • Styling: Tailwind CSS with Shadcn UI components for a clean, modern design
  • Backend: Server-side rendering and API endpoints through SvelteKit
  • Database: PostgreSQL managed through Drizzle ORM for type-safe queries
  • Authentication: OAuth integration for Google authentication

Self-Hosted Infrastructure

The entire application is self-hosted for maximum control and performance:

  • Deployed using Docker containers for consistent environments
  • Managed through Coolify for streamlined deployment and updates
  • Database hosted on the same server for reduced latency
  • Regular backups to ensure data safety

Play Ordjagten Today

Ordjagten Game

Challenge yourself with this innovative word game that will expand your vocabulary and transform how you think about word relationships.

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Victor Østergaard - 25/01/2025