Six degrees of etymological separation.
Hexymon is a daily linguistic puzzle game where players connect a start word to a target word by traversing an etymological graph. The gameplay mechanic resembles a word ladder, but operates on valid linguistic relationships (ancestry, descent, borrowing) rather than spelling changes.
- Core etymology data comes from EtymoLink: A Structured English Etymology Dataset (Gao & Sun, 2024), ACL 2024. DOI: 10.18653/v1/2024.lchange-1.12.
- Dataset repository: https://github.com/yuan-w-gao/etymolink
- If you use this data, please cite the paper (see above DOI).
The objective is to connect the Start Word (top) to the Target Word (bottom).
- Input: Players use a search input to find and select words.
- Pathing:
- The Perfect Path: Words belonging to the specific daily puzzle path snap into the main hexagonal chain.
- Constraints: The Language label on empty slots acts as a constraint. If multiple valid paths exist, these hints define which one is the "correct" solution.
- Branching: Valid words that are related but not on the target path appear as branches (detours).
- Hints: Empty nodes display the language of the target word.
- Constraints: Players have 6 "lives". An incorrect guess consumes a life but reveals a Part of Speech hint for one of the unrevealed nodes on the optimal path.
This project uses SvelteKit and is deployed to Netlify.
For documentation on the architecture, local development setup, and code standards, please refer to CONTRIBUTING.md.
MIT
I made this for fun. If you like it, please consider donating to a local food bank.