I built a tiny daily puzzle game: Clue Funnel 🎉
Hi IH! I’ve been working on a small side project called Clue Funnel, and I’d love to share it here.
It’s a daily puzzle game where you guess a mystery subject — it could be a person, place, idea, event, cultural work, or invention — using six clues that get progressively more specific. Clue 1 is intentionally broad, and each wrong guess reveals the next clue until things click.
I built it because I wanted to provide a quick, low-pressure educational daily challenge that wasn’t tied to streaks, accounts, or data collection. Just a clean puzzle that takes under a minute.
What it includes:
- One new puzzle every day
- Free-text guessing with fuzzy matching
- No signups or personal data
- Percentile + solve distribution after finishing
- A small shareable result card
If you’d like to try it, here’s the link:
👉 https://cluefunnel.com
I’d love feedback on the clue difficulty, flow, or anything that feels off.
If you’re working on your own small web game, feel free to share it too!
Fun! Solved today's puzzle on the very last try 😅
Love how simple the idea is. I think its refreshing to see a product idea that isn't in the typical kind of business optimization domain.
My feedback
I wasn't totally sure what type of guess I was supposed to make. My only information was the first clue: "They are remembered for refusing to accept limits placed on others." Am I supposed to guess a descriptive word, like "anarchist"? Or a group of people? Once I clicked through a few more clues I figured out that I was supposed to guess a specific historical figure. My suggestion is, if it doesn't reduce the challenge of the puzzle, I think some guidance into the type of answer the user is supposed to brainstorm would make the experience clearer.
Would be interested to see in the future how you build a user base. Will you create an email or SMS list that gets sent the daily puzzle? Will users be able to post the puzzle to their socials to get their friends involved? Maybe a version of the daily puzzle geared for work teams to do a daily ice breaker?
Glad you liked it!
Thanks — this is really thoughtful feedback, appreciate you taking the time 🙏
You’re right about the early ambiguity. The intent is that Clue 1 can be very broad (sometimes abstract) and later clues getting more specific. But I agree there’s a fine line between intriguing and confusing. I’m considering adding very light guidance early on (e.g. “this is a person / concept / place”) without giving away too much.
Re sharing: there actually is a share card on the results screen, but perhaps it is too subtle right now — clearly something I can surface better.
Longer term, I’m curious about things like daily reminders or small team/icebreaker use cases, but for now I’m focused on tuning difficulty and clarity and seeing if the core loop sticks.
Really appreciate the perspective — this kind of feedback is gold!
No problem! Feel free to ping me as you keep working.
I just joined IH, so I'm not sure how people typically connect on here besides just commenting. Open to connecting on other platforms if there isn't a dedicated solution on here that I just haven't found yet.
Side note: I would just bookmark your profile as a reminder to check in later, but when I navigate to https://www.indiehackers.com/SmallPuzzleMaker I get redirected to your /history page, so I can't actually view your profile. Did you know this? Not sure if @csallen has some kind of "report a bug" form or something
Great, thank you!
Hm, pretty new to IH myself :)
Awesome, now we receive a feedback :)
Are you able to use the feedbacks?
Really appreciate the suggestion! :)
This looks really fun! I love the idea of a quick, no-friction daily challenge. I’ll probably try it now and then — the clue progression as well seems super clever.
Happy to hear it! Hope you enjoy it!
Yeah, have you been able to try it out?
Yeah, I tried it — really enjoyed it. The format feels lightweight but surprisingly engaging. Curious to see how it evolves over time.
Good to hear that
Congratulations🎊. It's very interesting, and some people might have interest but they don't come across your website.
Do you have interest in exploring your website to more right audiences?
Hi! This is a really fun idea to pass the time, but I'd love it if the system interacted a bit more with the user when we submit an incorrect answer. That would make the experience feel more natural and less robotic or manual.
For example, the first riddle was about Galileo. Of course, I didn't get it right on the first try and I wrote "scientist." It would be great if, before giving the next clue, the system responded to that wrong attempt with some personality or humor. Something like: "Wow! You're really close, think you can get it with the next clue? 😄"
I think interactions like this would make the experience more fun, engaging, and human.
Good luck and congratulations 😄
Glad you like it!
Ah, yes that is an excellent thought and great feedback! Will give it some thought and see what I can do 😊
Thank you!
Implemented a simple function for this kind of interaction, would love to hear what you think! @javiermr
hello your idea is really good for pass time and a lot can learn from it while playing the games, do you have already personalized funnel for this?
Hi! Glad you like it! In the short term I am looking to run this without accounts etc to keep it lightweight and easy to just jump in and play, but those kind of features will definitely be on the roadmap in the future
Happy to answer questions about the clue design, difficulty tuning, or anything that feels off. Feedback is super helpful as I refine the daily puzzles!