Alex Wein
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alexwein.bsky.social
Alex Wein
@alexwein.bsky.social
170 followers 560 following 370 posts
data worker, word game liker, pretty boring quite frankly.
Oakland, CA
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alexwein.bsky.social
i know we all rag on tufte for insisting that joylessness should be a core value of visualization, but we forget about the adorable little "ideas" guy from tvdoqi
a angular face with one eye, with 3 stick figure legs (or possibly 2 arms and a spine). above the face, it says "ideas"
November 12, 2025 at 6:31 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
made enough progress on coney letters to push to prod loopyletters.val.run/coney

like my other "find a big word" games, the words are random uniformly pulled from the wordnik list, which includes a lot of junk. i'm sorry. better on mobile than desktop.
#How to play Coney Letters: 1. Use every letter to spell a word. 2. Consecutive letters in the word must be adjacent on the circle. The middle letter is adjacent to all the others. 3. When you find a word, the next word to find appears. 4. Go fast? Go slow? Enjoy! a screenshot of a safari on an phone. The page is titled "Coney Letters, a word game by Alex Wein". In the center is a white circle with the letter E. Surrounding the circle are 7 thick arcs with the letters O, R, T, N, C ,I starting at 1 o'clock position and going clockwise.
November 9, 2025 at 10:46 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
true every time
a screenshot of a post by Alex Wein on Nov 10, 2022 that says "I always get a littlethrill when I join a table to itself". it has 2 likes.
November 9, 2025 at 2:03 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
I added a new column for `sorted_letters` and did a little wrangle. now other valid guesses besides the puzzle seed will be properly handled
a screenshot of a sqlite query in javascript: const randRowsQ = ` with words as ( select * from judgments where length(word) >= 5 and length(word) <= 10 order by random() limit 7 ), anagrams as ( select words.id, upper(words.word) as word, words.sorted_letters, upper(judgments.word) as valid_anagram from words left join judgments on words.sorted_letters = judgments.sorted_letters ) select id, word, sorted_letters, json_group_array(valid_anagram) as valid_anagrams from anagrams group by id, word, sorted_letters `;
November 9, 2025 at 2:00 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
i was considering adding more loops to loopy letters, but ended up filling in the donut instead. wip alexwein--0199cef989287565a4c0a69b4c1e007f.web.val.run
a screenshot of a safari on an phone. The page is titled "Coney Letters, a word game by Alex Wein". In the center is a yellow circle with the letter A. Surrounding the circle are four thick arcs with the letters S, M, O, and T, starting in the northwest and going clockwise. The word "-MOATS-" is above the circle
November 8, 2025 at 8:28 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
you can add an S to the end of 56k words (in wordnik) and get a valid word. Of the 56k there are 112 already end in S.
a screenshot of an Obserable notebook. It contains a table with columns: tail, n_words, n_words_5plus, n_words_8plus. The value for tail is always a unique single letter. Below the table is the following duckdb sql query: with tails as ( from wordnik select word, substring(word, 1, length(word) - 1) as head, substring(word, length(word)) as tail, where substring(word, 1, length(word) - 1) in ( select word from wordnik ) ) from tails select tail, count(*) as n_words, count_if(length(word) >= 5)::int as n_words_5plus, count_if(length(word) >= 8)::int as n_words_8plus, group by all order by n_words desc
September 27, 2025 at 5:29 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
these onion flavored rings are flavored like chicken flavored ramen
an unopened bag of Funyuns that are Marchuna Hot & Spicy Chicken Ramen flavored. The bag has an orange starbusrst background with a cup of maruchan ramen in front. inside the cup is a photograph of the funyuns.
August 30, 2025 at 8:33 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
there is just a single 8-letter word that ends in -NESSES
a screenshot of code and output. The first cell contains javascript: ``` wordnik = { const url = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wordnik/wordlist/main/wordlist-20210729.txt'; const response = await fetch(url) const text = await response.text() const rows = text.split('\n') return rows.map(row => row.replace(/"/g, '')).map(x=>({word: x})) } ``` Beneath that is the output of the second cell. It is a data table with cols: n_letters, n_words, n_words_endi..., pct_nesses. Beneath that is a cell of SQL code: ``` from wordnik select length(word) as n_letters, count(*) as n_words, count_if(word like '%nesses')::int as n_words_ending_with_nesses, 1.0 * n_words_ending_with_nesses / n_words as pct_nesses, group by 1 order by 1 ```
July 23, 2025 at 1:22 AM
alexwein.bsky.social
these debbii dawson singles have been all been super fun
July 6, 2025 at 6:40 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
twowords.val.run

Is It *Two* Words?, my latest janky little game, offers at most minutes of entertainment
phone-sized screenshot. the top is a header that says "Is It Two Words? a word game by Alex Wein". There is a rectangle below with "2/25" and "0:11", beneath that is another similar sized rectangle that says: "Last Word: stressed ✅ desserts ✅ -2s". The box below is larger and says rumel in front of a half-light-blue half-light-purple background. Below that is another rectangle: "Next Word: reviver"
July 1, 2025 at 12:55 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
still not fun
screenshot. that says "Is It Two Words?" at the top. Followed by a rectangle with "4/81" on the left and "0:13" on the right. Below that is another rectangle that says "Last Word: stun ✓". below that is a larger rectangle that says "tned" with a blue/purple background The bottom rectangle says "Next Word: omega"
June 30, 2025 at 3:55 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
i guess what I meant was there aren't enough words to make a *fun* game...but there honestly wasn't any risk of that to begin with
a screenshot. at the top is the word "radar" inside a half blue, half purple rectangle. below it is a *history* table with columns for Word and Path. The words are: elpmaxe, string, radar, dessert, elpmaxe, string. the paths are: RL, LR, RLR, LRL, LR, LR.
June 26, 2025 at 5:50 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
there are maybe not enough good "reversible words" like (KNITS <=> STINK) to make a word game
a screenshot of a computational notebook. in the notebook, there is a table of numbers with the columns: word_length, n_reversible_words, n_palindromes, n_unique_reversible_words. There are 584 four letter reversible words, 37 of which are palindromes. Beneath the table is the sql query used to generate it, repeated below: with reversible_words as ( from wordnik select word, word = reverse(word) as palindrome, where reverse(word) in (select word from wordnik) and word != '' ), agg as ( from reversible_words select length(word) as word_length, count(*) as n_reversible_words, count_if(palindrome = true)::int as n_palindromes, n_palindromes + (n_reversible_words - n_palindromes) / 2 as n_unique_reversible_words, group by all order by word_length ) from agg --select sum(n_palindromes), sum(n_unique_words)
June 25, 2025 at 8:34 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
a cool thing about the marvel snap card Cannonball is that your deck is pretty near invulnerable when he's blastin'...I made it into the top 50 with this evil brew
screenshot of a marvel snap deck called "steal this planet!" featuring: zabu, mercury, surge, fenris wolf, negasonic teenage warhead, luna snow, shang chi, galacta, symbiote spider-man, cannonball, galactus, alioth.
June 21, 2025 at 5:36 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
my oeuvre
screenshot with a dark background. A white timeline from Jan 1, 2020 to Dec 31, 2025 goes horizontally through the image. Above and below are 15 rectangles including screenshots, titles, and links.
May 19, 2025 at 11:31 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
another decade or so and I might figure out how the hell you make a word game
a screenshot of google sheets titled "word games so far": it contains the following table: date link stack published Find A Big Word, Spelling Bee-like https://observablehq.com/@a-lexwein/find-a-big-word?collection=@a-lexwein/find-a-big-word Observable Notebook 2020-08-03 find a big word, first/last https://observablehq.com/@a-lexwein/find-a-big-word-first-last?collection=@a-lexwein/find-a-big-word Observable Notebook 2020-09-27 find a (big) word, rings https://observablehq.com/@a-lexwein/find-a-big-word-rings?collection=@a-lexwein/find-a-big-word Observable Notebook 2021-02-18 Find a Big Word, Boggle-like https://observablehq.com/@a-lexwein/find-a-big-word-boggle-like?collection=@a-lexwein/find-a-big-word Observable Notebook 2022-03-26 Find a Big Word in a Directed Graph https://observablehq.com/@a-lexwein/find-a-big-word-in-a-directed-graph?collection=@a-lexwein/find-a-big-word Observable Notebook 2022-04-29 Find A Big Word, double scramble https://observablehq.com/@a-lexwein/find-a-big-word-double-scramble?collection=@a-lexwein/find-a-big-word Observable Notebook 2022-05-14 3 Big Words https://observablehq.com/@a-lexwein/3-big-words Observable Notebook 2023-12-29 Find All The Words: Quad Workout https://observablehq.com/@a-lexwein/alexs-word-games Observable Notebook 2024-01-07 Not a Word! Quiz https://observablehq.com/@a-lexwein/not-a-word Observable Notebook 2024-01-27 Downwords https://observablehq.com/@a-lexwein/downwords Observable Notebook 2024-03-10 B.O.G.G. - Basic Orthographic Grid Game https://alexs-word-game.vercel.app/ Vercel/GH Codespaces 2024-05-03 Air n' Spelling https://alexs-word-game.vercel.app/eggjam23 Vercel/GH Codespaces 2024-09-14 Loopy Letters https://alexwein-loopyletters.web.val.run/ Val Town 2025-02-17 Loopy Letters: Birds https://alexwein-loopylettersbirds.web.val.run/ Val Town 2025-03-01 Gord Wame https://gordwame.val.run/ Val Town 2025-05-13
May 16, 2025 at 3:25 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
i'm taking stock of all my little words games
a still from the tv show Parks and Rec, with Adam Scott holding up a clay model, while wearing a Letters to Cleo T-Shirt
May 16, 2025 at 3:16 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
i added user-provided boards last night using the new townie

- gordwame.val.run/play/gordwame
- gordwame.val.run/play/trythis...
a screenshot of Townie: in blue is my prompt: make boardstrings work with urls add an api route "/play/:boardstring" to backend/index.js validate that the boardstring only contains letters of the alphabet and is an even length of characers if valid input, call stringToBoard from utils.ts on the boardstring. With the output board of stringToBoard, follow the pattern in the /newBoard route: call solutions and create aresponse object to return with the board and solutions /play/:boardstring should return the main react app at "/" but with the the data from the boardstring. Unlike /newBoard which just returns the JSON. followed by that in black: it "townie" is repsonding with: I'll help you implement the /play/:boardstring route that works with URLs...
May 15, 2025 at 3:26 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
Unclear how much juice this has, but I made a little progress.
Screenshot of a word game. There’s a circle containing four letters and each of those letter is connected to a second letter outside of the circle.
May 10, 2025 at 6:13 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
going with a wordscapes-esque anagram wheel, I think.
Square screenshot image. The background is light gray. There is the blue outline of big circle that is (not quite) centered in the image. At 12 o'oclock wrt the circle, there is a letter G inside a white circle with a blue outline that is outside of the first big circle, connected to a slightly larger white circle with the letter W that is inside the big circle (W is also at 12 o'clock). At 3 o'clock: O is inside and A is out. At 6 o'clock: R is inside and M is outside. At 9 o'clock: D is inside and E is outside.
April 28, 2025 at 2:02 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
trying to revisit this prototype with a better interface. don't think i've found it yet.
observablehq.com/@a-lexwein/f...
a screenshot on an off-black background. Along the left, there are words in white text: "word/game", "ward", "draw", "grad", "drag". Next to each word, there are four cards that spell the words. The cards have characters letters on them: the first for instance has an upside down and rightside up W on the top, and an upside down and rightside up G on the bottom. The cards are white and purple.
April 21, 2025 at 4:19 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
pretty fun game
Balatro screen shot: deck stake wins: 100% (120/120)
April 15, 2025 at 9:38 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
With @scottmccloud.bsky.social and @goraina.bsky.social's new The Cartoonists Club out, I wrote about one my favorite genres of anything: Comics About Comics. There's a bit of a data viz focus, but these books are great for everyone.
alex-we.in/posts/2025-0...
A stack of 6 books with the spines visible: The Cartoonists Club by Scott McCloud and Raina Telgemeier, Making Comics by Lynda Barry, What It Is by Barry, Unflattening by Nick Sousanis, Understanding Comics by McCloud, Making Comics by McCloud, Reinventing Comics by McCloud
April 6, 2025 at 4:36 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
I forked my last word game and added wikipedia's list of birds alexwein-loopylettersbirds.web.val.run
a screenshot of "loopy letters: birds, a word game by Alex Wein". In the center there is a photo of black-chinned honeyeater bird, it is enclosed by two concentric circles that form a donut. The donut is segmented into letters that spell BLACKCHINNEDHONEYEATER
March 1, 2025 at 11:56 PM
alexwein.bsky.social
I was piqued by @albertocairo.com 's thread of responses about using llms for data viz, so tried to make a little dashboard for a little app I made for my little word games. It was going fine until I needed a stacked area chart.
a screenshot of 3 screenshots. They all are titled: "Cumulative Judgments Over Time". The first is shades of yellow areas. The second is Grey, yellow and Purple Triangles, the third has x and y axes but no data is plotted, so it's mostly a blank white rectangle. None of them are stacked area charts
February 26, 2025 at 3:11 AM