Show HN: Lastwordonearth.com

Posted by hnrich 1 hour ago

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This is a silly idea I had a couple years ago that I just recently launched. It's a slow, globally shared word "game" (or experiment?) to find the Last Word on Earth. It starts with about 174k words on a board and anyone in the world can click a word to remove it from the board. Poof, gone. Eventually, the whole world will have decided on one word that remains (other milestone numbers are tracked as well).

I imagine it's going to take a while to get down to a single word, but once that happens, it will be recorded and a fresh board will repopulate to start again. And again and again.

There is little chance of this happening but it would be hilarious if the first final word was "why"? That would make a lot of sense.

If you have a few seconds, add a few clicks to the board to help get the number down and let's see what happens!

And if you have a few more seconds, let me know if you have any ideas or see any issues. I'd love to hear any feedback at all.

Comments

Comment by d00d0ff000 30 minutes ago

Maybe you shouldn’t have it always start/load on “a”, rather have it first load to as random position of a random letter so one section does not get immediately over plundered by default.

Like maybe a big “jump to random words” button at the top to make it more varied…

Comment by hnrich 25 minutes ago

Good ideas. I like randomly loading to a new position since that is the most critical moment for new viewers. The a-words are definitely not going to make it out alive in this current edition.

Edit: Added! Thank you for the suggestion. And also added an input box to scroll to a specific word faster.

Comment by AmazingEveryDay 57 minutes ago

All the words I don't know are so interesting! It's difficult to banish them. I think of interest will be the log of the journey down to the one word, rather than the one word that remains.

Comment by hnrich 49 minutes ago

That is a great perspective. Once the board gets down to 150 words, they will stay on screen and only fade out as people strike them. Thinking about it from your point of view, that may not be fun to watch your favorite remaining words get banished on the way to one. Here's hoping that one of your favs makes it to the end!

I really appreciate you taking the time to check it out and comment.

Comment by d00d0ff000 35 minutes ago

Well I just bashed every variation of “abash” for my part.

Good luck on your journey!