Word Tracer

Word Tracer is a word puzzle game with crossword-style boards and a swipeable letter wheel. Trace words from the wheel to reveal the grid, clear each level, and keep an eye out for bonus words. Offline and ad-free.

Start Playing

Play on GitHub: https://plhosk.github.io/wordtracer/

How To Play

The Wheel

• Swipe across the wheel (bottom of screen) to build a word from the available tokens, then lift to submit it.

• Example: to spell the word EAT, start the swipe on EA and lift after reaching T.

• Words are built from two or more tokens. Each token can only be used once per word.

Swap Button

• Press the swap button (below the wheel) to swap the order of all tokens with two or more letters.

• Example: to spell the word HOT, press the swap button once to change the OH token to HO, then swipe from HO to T.

The Board

• On the board (top of screen), hidden words are positioned like a crossword, spelled either downwards or to the right.

• Find words by guessing and using information from the board such as word lengths and revealed letters.

• Use the Hint button for a clue to an unsolved word.

• Solving words will reveal some of the letters of connected words. Solve a partially revealed word by submitting the full word.

• Guess and submit every word on the board to advance to the next level.

Level Packs

• Switch between different level packs using the Level button in the top right. Earlier packs are easier and later ones are more difficult.

Settings

• A few game options can be controlled using the Settings button. For example, turning on the Always show hint option will show a hint at the bottom of the screen at all times, if one is available.

Play Locally

Clone the Git repository to play locally (requires Git and Node.js v22 or newer):

git clone https://github.com/plhosk/wordtracer.git
cd wordtracer
npm install
npm run dev

Then open the local Vite URL shown in your terminal. Default: http://localhost:5173

Features

• Look up swiped words in the built-in dictionary
• Hint system shows a partial dictionary entry
• Multiple level packs with saved progress
• Light and dark themes
• Web and Android support using Vite and Capacitor

API

An optional Node server exposes the game through a REST API for tools, agents, and external clients.

npm run server:watch

The API runs on http://localhost:3001 by default. Full endpoint documentation lives in API.md: https://github.com/plhosk/wordtracer/blob/main/API.md

See how many levels your local LLM agent can solve without help! Suggested AI prompt: Read API.md. Solve levels starting with A1 using python httpx requests. The server is at http://localhost:3001. Make one API call at a time using uv run python -c.

Level Generation

Levels are pre-generated through a Python-based build pipeline that assembles lexicons, token combos, candidate boards, scoring, final pack export, and dictionary lookup data. A large set of generated levels are distributed with the game.

npm run levels:build

Pipeline notes live in scripts/README.md, and tuning guidance lives in scripts/levels_build_tuning.md.

Development

Useful scripts:

npm run dev           # start the Vite web app
npm run check         # run TypeScript and ESLint
npm run build         # build the web app
npm run build:server  # build the Node API server
npm run preview       # preview the production web build locally
npm run server        # build and start the API server
npm run server:watch  # rebuild and restart the API server on changes

Android helpers:

npm run cap:sync      # build web assets and sync them into Capacitor
npm run android:build # build a debug APK
npm run android:build:release:unsigned  # reproducible unsigned release APK build (npm ci + cap sync + gradle release)

Reproducible Android release runbook: docs/reproducible-builds.md

Licensing

Project and third-party notices for bundled data sources are documented in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.