15% of the ClueDay cases till today have been created by someone other than me. I want to say thank you to all the contributors!
I want to show you all how the submission process works. Grateful to the 19 people who found the Create a Case form, filled it in, and trusted me with a word and five clues. :) Hope I've been doing justice to your vision!
What arrives from the submission form
The Create a Case form is short on purpose so you get to submit a six letter word, five clues, and a display name. Everything else is pretty much optional: a link for the name to point at if you want to connect your socials, an email if you want to be notified before me posting it, and a free text comments box to capture anything else.
Submissions land in a Supabase table and I read them there. Think of it like an excel sheet behind a Google Form. I do not have any automations set up connecting the submission back to the website. And there is no dashboard, no queue or a review workflow. So I open the table and manually scroll through the submissions.
The supabase table where I see all the submissions.
How a submission becomes a case
I usually have clues designed for the coming week. Once I accept a submission, my rule is to slot new community cases a week out. That gives me a buffer to design the explanation, record a Case Debrief if I want one, and change my mind without touching anything already scheduled. If I need to move the clues I have already written, I sometimes do that too.
What makes a clue arc work
The thing I look for first is the gradient. Clue one should feel unfair and clue five should feel obvious. If I can solve the word from clue three, the last two clues are unnecessary and the case ends early for everybody. I myself have been guilty of overestimating the difficulty of clues sometimes so ofcourse this has trial and error behind it.
Some of my favourite ones are those that create a compelling story. Like the one thejayisnotsilent creeated for SCREAM opened with 'Munch on paint, tasty?' and closed on 'What's your favourite scary movie?'. The first clue was a painting wordplay and the last is a much obvious movie reference. thejayisnotsilent also submitted clues for Case #113 on July 25 and Case #120 on Aug 1. Go check them out!
The clues and my attempts for the word of the day by thejayisnotsilent.
The second thing I look for is range. Five clues that all come from the same domain can get boring. So I try to look for clues that have some diversity in their references, meanings, and wordplay. Each clue opens a different door to the same answer.
If you have submitted a case, let's talk
If you have submitted a word and clues, or you are working on one, and you are comfortable sharing how you built it, I would love to hear it! I am always looking to learn and upskill, plus share stories of awesome people! We can talk about what word you started from and why, what your clue-designing process was, which one you were proudest of, and more.
Every time I get an entry, I'm still always surprised, because writing a clue arc is really hard work. So spending the time to create clues for a game one might play for two minutes a day is really saying something. Thank you again!
Reach me at helloclueday@gmail.com.
Create a Case — Submit a word and five clues. Share the link to show your skills!
I want to share why I launched there, what I was hoping to achieve, and what I learnt from the experience.
Why Product Hunt?
Product Hunt is a community-driven platform where creators launch their new website projects.
For somebody who is building a game, the tech enthusiasts on Product Hunt are not my primary audience. My primary audience is spending time playing games on LinkedIn while heading to work on the subway. That being said, I did have a few goals by launching ClueDay on Product Hunt.
Discoverability: From an AEO, GEO, and SEO perspective ClueDay would get a great deal of exposure and credibility boost.
Learning: Understanding how Product Hunt works for when I do launch a tech product, and getting into the rhythm of tracking new products if I want to be a part of the startup ecosystem.
Personal challenge: Purely for the plot, it would be pretty cool to have a good Product Hunt experience and show up on the featured leaderboard.
My goals for the ClueDay Product Hunt launch
Outcome
It ranked 55 out of 1,100, which sounds great in theory. But it was only about 3-4 hours' worth of effort on the day of promoting it to friends so the impact was limited.
The real impact of having the Product Hunt launch was seeing a 25% spike in the number of site visitors. I also had a couple of people reach out personally on LinkedIn who wanted to promote their services, but that's neither here nor there.
ClueDay's Product Hunt launch day results
Lessons Learned
A vanity metric is not enough motivation to work hard, I knew that about myself but good to have that learning solidified into self-awareness.
I had actually previously set up a draft launch a month back, but cancelled it last minute because 'I wanted more time to prepare.' That is a mistake. Literally nothing changed in a month. The lesson is to launch early and iterate, and not wait for the perfect moment.
The recommendation is to have a host of people ready to comment and upvote your launch as soon as it is 12am PST. I hesitate to pass that wisdom forward, seeing that I didn't implement it. Wishing folks all the best in their launches!
One day the website had 500 users (from 20-30 average) and that highlighted that a gap in the existing leaderboard.
Everyday I check my backend analytics, to see how many visitors we have, page views and bounce rates. One fine day I opened the dashboard and saw a spike of around 500 active users. That should have felt great but for the reveal of how disastrous my leaderboard setup was.
What the leaderboard used to be
The original leaderboard was a simple list by rank.
Seven people per page, ranked top to bottom.
Every player got a random detective name stitched from two arrays.
Fine at 20–30 players, disaster at 500 players.
You had to scroll through 50+ pages, clicking right and left, to see where you stood on the leaderboard. Nobody was going to do that since it was adding zero value to your life.
What people want from a leaderboard
I stopped and asked myself what someone genuinely wants from a leaderboard. In my understanding its three basic questions:
How do I stack up against everyone else?
How did I do compared to myself?
How fast was I versus other detectives?
I rebuilt the whole thing to answer those three questions. The centerpiece is now a bar chart which has five bars, one for each clue count, with the height of each bar showing how many detectives solved it in that many clues. Your own group is highlighted in green. In one glance you can see the shape of the whole group of people who attempted it and where you rank.
Five bars, your group in green, and only the rows that matter around you.
No more endless scrolling
Underneath the chart I show a small spotlight of rows instead of every player. If you're in a clue group, you see the fastest solver, the person just above you, you, the person just below you, and the slowest. This way you always have knowledge of where you sit in the overall distribution.
Leaderboard learning
It's difficult to know how to design for scale until you reach that scale. That's how features are constantly updating. The look and feel of websites is constantly changing because you can't and shouldn't start off with 100 features for 10 users. Growth is a good stress tester for your product and your design, and you should be ready to rethink and rebuild when the time comes.
The old how-to-play page was being completely ignored, or misunderstood. I asked a designer friend for help.
The original how-to-play page had a wall of text explaining the instructions across a three-step process. I iterated on it multiple times, but I watched people ignore it completely when they played it in front of me.
I realized nobody reads instructions before playing a game, especially when they can just jump in and start playing. I've literally been guilty of doing the same. This leads to two outcomes - you either figure it out on your own or leave.
What was there before
The old page had three steps:
The old how-to-play page. Iterated yet ignored.
01 — Decode the Clue: Read the first clue and guess a 6-letter word it could point to. A case = 1 word + 5 clues.
02 — Guess and Solve: Keep unlocking clues as you make the wrong guesses. You get 5 clues to uncover the mystery word of the day and solve the case.
03 — Feedback Colors: Green means the letter is in the right place. Orange means the letter is in the word but in the wrong place.
What wasn't working
As the creator I obviously don't want people to leave before they can play a round of the game. Leaving with a bad experience after playing is not ideal, but much more preferable than not playing at all. Two things kept coming up. First, people skipped the page entirely — the button was there but most new players went straight to the game. Second, those who clicked the button found the content too text-heavy to absorb before playing.
The new approach
My designer friend was amazing in recommending the concept of modals, which are basically pop-ups for walkthroughs. I rebuilt it as an interactive tutorial that runs inside the actual game. When you click How to Play, you land on a real practice puzzle where the word is GUITAR and a series of modals walk you through it step by step.
The first modal points at the clue and asks what 6-letter word 'Makes music' could describe. Then it tells you to type SINGER — because a SINGER makes music, it's a reasonable first guess. The button doesn't activate until you've actually typed it.
You press enter, the colors appear on the tiles, and only then does the next modal show up and explain what those colors mean.
Tutorial modal flow. I've added an Expert mode which only shows you which letters are correct, without color hints.
Why this works better
The spotlight overlay dims everything except the element you're supposed to look at. And since this modal sits right below the highlighted area you're hopefully reacting to what's on screen in front of you.
If you've been already playing none of this affects you. But if someone new lands on the site and doesn't know what they're doing, I now have a fighting chance of showing them what they are getting into before they decide to leave!
I've been building daily clues for the past month. Its hard work. And as I started collecting feedback I was told my clues for ClueDay were sometimes too vague, or just synonyms of the answer. Got some tough love, both from my friends (basically founding users at this point), and the leaderboard.
I knew they were right because I was spending more time adding new features versus improving the daily core experience (which is the CLUES!)
Going back to school
Have started learning about cryptic crosswords and clue construction. Lot of resources (mainly oriented toowards the crossword community, but I'm getting back to my roots and needed something to occupy my time on the Subway anywas (without internet!). Between those and Minute Cryptic as daily practice, my brain is working double-time. I wanted to share some resources that have been helpful in learning about clue design.
I came across MinuteCryptic in May. It has been helpful in recognizing good clue design! And also my first introduction into learning about surface readings, fodders, indicators, anagrams and more.
Though initially I plan to give myself more leeway since I have 5 clues to lead someone to the answer, I aspire to design an experience that gives someone that satisfaction of having achieved something. A little dopamine goes a long way in someone's day!
What I'm changing
While I am learning about cryptic clues (the communities are big and welcoming!) I sat with Claude to learn the basics by designing a skill. I also learnt how important the explanations are, versus assuming someone will understanding after getting to the answer. So I'm going to experiment sharing my own thought process of designing the clues.
A clue-design skill in Claude is helping me learn better clue-design!
The clues I'm proudest of now are the ones wher i mix misdirection, global references, and multiple meanings across domains as the clues expand. Still learning and continuing to work on my gaps. Submit cases to help me out in the meanwhile!
Create a Case — Help me design a better case! Submit a word and 5 clues now!
A brainwave with way too many inspirations. And deciding to go all in.
I spent time thinking about what ClueDay should look like and what emotion it should convey. It was a daily word game puzzle, and it would have clues in it.
The initial name for the game was Signal.
The name Signal was always a placeholder. I needed to figure out naming, plus see if I could get more inspiration for associated features. I named it ClueDay (literally no brainpower was used here). I did check if the domain was available and it was, but I didn't buy it until I was 100% sure I was going to continue working on it.
PS: I did a get a recommendation that I should name it Cluedle, but I wanted to set up my own identity.
The NeXT reference: I really like the logo of Steve Jobs' NeXT computers, with its 4 letters in almost a grid-like shape. I wanted ClueDay to have that same energy: clean, considered, a little serious.
The color palette: I'm a big fan of Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. The book is in orange and blue and that's how the logo's original color palette was born.
The initial concept for the ClueDay logo.
Two weeks of user testing revealed the Wordle colors are way too ingrained, and humanity has a whole has decided GREEN is the color of confirmation. A past future version of me sat and updated the color scheme.
It wasn't clear that blue signified the letter is at the right location.
Doubling down
When I kept coming back to ClueDay instead of moving on; I made the call to invest properly. I bought clueday.com knowing the .com was available and that signaled commitment, both to players and to myself.
Hosting with Vercel
The ClueDay project dashboard in Vercel.
I used Vercel to host and connect the domain. I bought in my GitHub repository and Vercel deployed it automatically. For a solo project moving fast was exactly the kind of zero-friction deployment I was looking for.
Final Logo
Along with the fact that Blue wasn't signalling FINAL location, I also felt the logo was flat and wasn't standing out so I decided based on Notion's logo to give it a dimension, which is why there is this shadow effect to it. As green and orange became the final colors I literally just pulled up an Indian flag image and color-picked to get the right shades. Tadaaah!
ClueDay was born on April 4, 2026.
ClueDay Final Logo — How quickly you crack a case? Find out at clueday.com.
Prompted on Lovable for the first draft, GitHub as the bridge, and then Claude Coded my way to the end.
There are a few benefits to being chronically online on LinkedIn and X. I knew all the conversations around AI even before starting. And as a product manager with an engineering mindset I had the confidence to build something. Two reasons why now was a good time to build a word game:
Cheap user feedback: The cost of being wrong is lower than before, and each piece of feedback is easy to act on (add an archive, plug in a dictionary API, show stats). Getting a game in front of people within days would be key.
Taste needs time: You cannot be a novice in a field and expect to have a strong product intuition. It’s built over time. Doing it for the kind of games I have spent years playing came easy.
ClueDay started inside Lovable. I dropped in reference images to set the visual direction, and iterated through prompts until I had the basic game mechanism going.
Categorizing the prompts on Lovable.
Connecting to GitHub
The first step was connecting Lovable to a GitHub repository. That one move changed the whole workflow. Now I had a real codebase I could pull locally, version properly, and work on with other tools. I brought it into Claude Code and started from there.
The two-way connection meant changes flowed both ways — I could see live updates on Lovable while working in Claude Code.
Switching to the terminal
I wasn't using the terminal at first, but that changed pretty quickly. Once I was in Claude Code it made more sense to run things directly for checking what was actually happening under the hood.
Claude Code in the terminal, running commands and checking the codebase.
What each tool is actually good at
Lovable earns its place on UI work. It is fast and the results look great. But for UX changes and anything involving logic or behaviour, I strongly prefer Claude Code. Lovable also burns through credits fast so for the volume of iteration ClueDay needed, Claude Code was the sustainable choice.
Finally, I was able to connect my GitHub repository to Vercel and since I bought the domain too on Vercel, it was an easy connect.
ClueDay — The cases are ready for you to solve them, word detective.
A lifelong word game obsession, a Wordle habit that stopped challenging me, and a new skill called vibe coding.
The Background
I have been a word game person my whole life. Taboo in my Speech & Drama classes, Scrabble games with (un)healthy point systems, and Mumbai Mirror crosswords on Sunday mornings; if it involved letters or numbers and thinking, I was in.
Sudoku, Wordle, 2048 (Yes I ended up playing them to put screenshots here.)
The Premise
I wanted to learn more about popular tools like Lovable, Claude Code, Vercel, GitHub and decided to build something I could actually enjoy. Games are one of the simpler things to create because you already have a vision for how they should work. You have an intuition, and preferences built over time of playing a range of similar games in that genre.
Quotes, and more Quotes
AI has changed a lot about building products. "The traditional design thinking process is dead." "Anybody can build." "Prompt engineering is the future." "We will have billion-dollar solopreneurs."
Irrespective of where you fall on the spectrum of the AI-hype cycle, vibe coding has definitely made it easier to build 0→1 high-fidelity prototypes that can be launched at the click of a button.
Running with an Idea
Around the same time that I was getting into vibe coding I had the idea: a daily mystery word, revealed through clues you choose to uncover one at a time. I wanted to go beyond thinking of just 5-letter words, expand my vocabulary and really have fun.
In the graveyard of my vibe-coded apps at the same time, ClueDay felt like it would be something I would go beyond 0->1 with. It felt like the challenge I had been missing.
So I built it.
ClueDay — Every case starts closed. How quickly you crack it is up to you.
ClueDay is a daily word puzzle game, and a hobby project. Every day there is a new mystery word. You get up to 5 clues to figure it out, and each wrong guess reveals the next clue. Guess in as few clues as possible.
The game runs entirely in your browser with no account required, and your results are saved locally on your device. You can also submit your own mystery words to create future cases for other players to solve.
There's also a small shop for the community of word detectives, with detective-themed tees, hoodies, mugs and totes. It's a zero-margin shop and so I don't make any money from it.
ClueDay has been featured on Playlin, DLES.gg and Listdle, websites that collate the best games across the internet.
Frequently Asked Questions
Word Games
Are there any good word games?
Yes. ClueDay is a free daily word game where you guess a 6-letter mystery word from five progressive clues, right here at clueday.com. Each clue is crafted with crossword techniques, so it rewards deduction, not just letter-guessing.
What are the top word games?
ClueDay is the top pick for anyone who likes clues and deduction: one mystery word a day, five clues revealed one at a time, solved in about two minutes.
What are the top daily word games?
ClueDay tops the list. A new case drops every day at local midnight, the same word for everyone, with five clues ordered hardest to easiest. Solve early for bragging rights or unlock more clues if you are stuck.
What is the best free daily word game?
ClueDay. It is completely free with no account or app install, gives you five clues to crack a 6-letter mystery word, and takes about two minutes a day. Play it at clueday.com.
General
Is ClueDay free?
Yes, completely free. There is no account, no sign-up, and no payment. A new case is released every day.
Do I need an account to play?
No. The game runs entirely in your browser and your results and stats are saved locally on your device.
Is there an Android or iOS app?
There is no native app, but ClueDay is installable as a web app. On iPhone, open clueday.com in Safari and tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. On Android and desktop Chrome, use the install option in the browser menu. It then opens like a regular app.
Does ClueDay work on desktop?
Yes. ClueDay plays in any modern browser on phone, tablet, or desktop. Desktop players also get Clue-E, the chameleon detective mascot, who reacts to how your investigation is going.
What are you doing with my data?
Very little. Your game results and settings never leave your device. Usage analytics are anonymous, with no personal information collected. The leaderboard shares only your chosen nickname, clue count, and solve time. The full privacy policy is linked in the footer.
How do I report a bug or share feedback?
Email helloclueday@gmail.com. Bug reports, clue quibbles, and feature ideas are all welcome.
The Name
How do you spell and say it? Is it Clue Day or ClueDay?
It is written ClueDay, one word with a capital C and D, and said the way it reads: clue day. Clue Day as two words points at the same game. The site is clueday.com.
Is ClueDay the same as Cluedo or Clue, the board game?
No, and there is no connection between them. Cluedo (sold as Clue in North America) is Hasbro's murder-mystery board game with suspects, rooms, and weapons. ClueDay is a free daily word puzzle in your browser: one 6-letter mystery word a day, five written clues, five guesses. The only thing the names share is the word clue.
Is ClueDay the same as Cluely?
No. Cluely is an unrelated AI assistant company. ClueDay is a daily word puzzle game and has nothing to do with it. The names look similar, so searches for ClueDay are sometimes auto-corrected to Cluely. If you are after the word game, you want clueday.com.
Is ClueDay a crossword clue lookup or an answer finder?
No. ClueDay is not a crossword-answer database, a clue-of-the-day lookup, or a trivia site. It is a self-contained game with its own mystery word and five original clues written for it, in the style of cryptic crossword clue-craft.
Gameplay
How do I play?
Read the first clue and guess the 6-letter mystery word. Each wrong guess reveals the next clue, up to 5 clues and 5 guesses in total. The goal is to crack the case in as few clues as possible. There is a guided Practice Case under How to Play if you want a walkthrough.
What do the letter colors mean?
Green means the letter is in the word and in the right spot. Orange means the letter is in the word but in a different spot. Grey means the letter is not in the word at all.
What is Expert Mode?
A toggle in Settings for players who want a harder challenge. It removes position hints, so every letter that appears in the word shows as a single blue color whether or not it is in the right spot.
When does the puzzle reset?
At midnight in your local timezone. Everyone in the same timezone plays the same case on the same day.
My friend in another country got a different case. Why?
Each case is tied to the calendar date, and the date rolls over at local midnight. If it is already tomorrow where your friend lives, they are one case ahead of you. You will get that case when your own midnight arrives.
I missed a day. Can I still play that case?
Yes. Every past case is replayable from Past Case Words. Note that only playing the daily case keeps your streak going.
Stats & Leaderboard
How do streaks work?
Play the daily case each day to keep your streak alive. Missing a day resets it. Replaying past cases does not count toward the streak.
Where are my stats stored? Can I back them up?
Stats live in your browser's local storage on the device you play on. There is no account or cloud sync yet, so clearing your browser data will clear your stats, and stats do not transfer between devices.
What is the Detective Leaderboard?
After you finish the daily case, the results page shows how your clue count and solve time compare with every other detective who solved that case.
How do I change my leaderboard name?
Tap your own row on the leaderboard. A pencil icon marks it as editable, and you can type a new name right there.
Community & Creating Cases
Can I create my own case?
Yes! Use Create a Case in the menu to submit a 6-letter word and five clues. If your case is selected, it is scheduled as a future daily case for everyone to solve.
Do I get credit for a case I created?
Yes. Your name appears on the case itself and you get a Creator row on that case's leaderboard.
What are Case Debrief videos?
Short videos on the official ClueDay YouTube channel that break down a case's word and how its five clues were constructed. When a case has one, it appears on the results page. Watch Case Debriefs on YouTube
A small shop with detective-themed tees, hoodies, mugs, and totes for the community of word detectives. It is zero-margin, so I make no money from it.
I have a question about a shop order. Who do I contact?
Orders are printed, paid, and shipped by Spreadshop, so their customer service handles order issues. Use the contact details in your order confirmation email. If you get stuck, email helloclueday@gmail.com and I will point you the right way.
How can I support ClueDay?
Play daily, share your results, tell a friend, submit a word, or subscribe to the YouTube channel. All of it helps more than you would think.
