Spinny Letters

Spinny Letters is a fast-paced desktop word game written in Python with Tkinter. Two animated letter reels spin across the screen. Stop them, then enter an American English word that begins with the first selected letter and ends with the second.

Every correct answer earns points and adds 20 seconds to the clock. Keep playing until time expires, then try to beat your saved high score.

How to Play

1. Click Start Game.
2. Press Space, Enter, or click Stop Letters to begin slowing the reels.
3. Wait for both reels to lock onto their selected letters.
4. Enter a word that starts with the first letter and ends with the second.
5. Press Enter or click Submit.
6. A valid answer earns 100 points and adds 20 seconds.
7. Continue until the timer reaches zero.

When time expires, Spinny Letters reveals one valid word you could have played for the final letter pair.

Keyboard Controls

Key	Action
Space	Stop the reels, or start a new game after time expires
Enter	Stop the reels, submit a word, or start a new game after time expires

Fair Letter Selection

The reels look random, but Spinny Letters guarantees that each selected first-and-last-letter combination has valid words in the active dictionary.

At the beginning of every round, the game:

1. Groups dictionary words by their first and last letters.
2. Chooses a playable letter pair.
3. Selects one secret example word for the round.
4. Animates both reels through random letters.
5. Slows the reels and lands them on the chosen pair.

The secret word does not restrict the player's answer. Any unused valid word matching the selected letters is accepted.

Letter combinations become more challenging as the score increases:

Score	Preferred minimum available words
0 to 2,499	150
2,500 to 4,999	75
5,000 to 9,999	40
10,000+	15

If no pair meets the preferred threshold, the game safely falls back to another playable pair.

Requirements

• Python 3.10 or newer recommended
• Tkinter, normally included with standard Windows and macOS Python installations
• A downloaded SCOWL American-English word list for validation (Spinny Letters does this for you on first run)

Run the Game

py spinny_letters.py

Or:

python spinny_letters.py

Dictionary

On first launch, Spinny Letters automatically downloads the SCOWL size-60 American-English word list and saves a cleaned local copy as spinny_letters_dictionary.txt. Future launches use that cached file and work offline.

The loader keeps lowercase ASCII alphabetic entries only. Because proper nouns in SCOWL are normally capitalized, this prevents names such as Hiromasa from entering the playable-word pool or appearing as timeout suggestions.

If the download fails, the game falls back to the editable custom allow/block list and tries again the next time it starts without a local dictionary.

Edit Allowed and Blocked Words

Click Edit Word List in the game or edit spinny_letters_wordlist.txt directly.

Use + to explicitly allow a word:

+photoshop

Use - to explicitly reject a word:

-inum

A plain word without a prefix is treated as allowed:

blender

Rules for the override file:

• One word per line
• Letters only
• Case-insensitive
• Lines beginning with # are comments
• Blocked words override the main dictionary
• Allowed words work even when CMUdict is unavailable
• Changes are reloaded automatically before rounds and validation checks

Scoring and Timer

• Starting time: 60 seconds
• Correct answer: 100 points
• Correct-answer bonus: 20 seconds
• Duplicate words are rejected during the same game
• The top 10 scores are saved locally

High scores are stored in spinny_letters_high_scores.json, which is created automatically beside the Python file.

Repository Files

spinny-letters/
├── spinny_letters.py
├── spinny_letters_wordlist.txt
├── requirements.txt
├── README.md
└── .gitignore

Notes

The game downloads its dictionary once, stores it locally, and then works offline on future launches.