DEV Community: Mudassir Hussain

I Built a Word Game You Play Backwards — Here's What It Did to My Brain

Mudassir Hussain — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 05:58:30 +0000

Try this: name a fruit. Now name one backwards — letter by letter, in reverse. Not the word spelled out and read right-to-left. I mean reach into your head and pull the answer out tail-first.

It feels broken, doesn't it? Like a drawer that only opens the wrong way. That exact feeling is the entire game I built: Noillirk — which is "Krillion" spelled backwards, because of course it is.

Noillirk is the third game in a small family I run. The first is Dive Krillion, a daily word game where everyone gets the same prompt ("name a fruit") and scores on how rare their answers are — say what everyone says and you stay near the surface, find the answer nobody else thinks of and you dive deep. The second is Krillion Infinite, the same engine with the daily limit removed. And the third is the engine mirrored: every prompt and answer runs backwards.

It started as a joke. It turned into the most interesting design problem of the three.

Your brain retrieves words forward-only

Here's what I didn't expect: playing backwards isn't "the same game but harder." It's a different game. When a prompt says "name a fruit," your brain doesn't scan a list — it fires the most accessible answer first. Apple. Always apple first. That forward retrieval is instant and effortless.

Ask for it backwards and the autopilot dies. You can't lean on the first answer, because the first answer arrives facing the wrong way. You have to hold the word, walk it backwards letter by letter, and check each step. Players describe the same sensation every time: I know this word perfectly, so why does this feel like hard work?

That gap — between knowing and producing — is where the fun lives. It's the same reason tongue-twisters are fun: the machinery is exposed.

Mirroring the design, not just the letters

The naive version would have been: take the normal game, reverse every string, done. That version is unplayable, and I know because I built it first.

Three things had to change for the mirror to work:

The prompt bank needed re-curation. Some prompts are brutal in reverse (long proper nouns, multi-word answers) and some become delightful (short, punchy categories). The backwards edition uses a subset tuned for the mechanic — the engine is shared, the content is deliberately not.
Scoring had to stay rarity-based. The core idea — rare answers score deep — survives the mirror untouched. In fact it gets better: backwards play punishes the obvious answer twice, once for being common and once for being hard to reverse under pressure.
The UI had to signal "mirror world" without explaining it. No tutorial paragraph. The name, the reversed logo treatment, and one reversed example on the landing page do all the teaching. Players get it in about four seconds, and the four seconds of confusion are part of the onboarding.

What playtesting the mirror taught me about the original

The strangest outcome: building the backwards game made the normal games better. Watching players struggle in reverse showed me exactly where the forward game's difficulty actually comes from — not from the prompts, but from the retrieval race between players. The leaderboard isn't comparing vocabulary. It's comparing how fast your brain serves up the second answer, the one past the obvious.

The backwards game is a diagnostic tool wearing a game costume. It shows you the shape of your own word retrieval by breaking it.

That's also why the three games share one engine. One prompt bank, one rarity model, one scoring system — three rule sets on top. A fix to scoring ships everywhere at once. The backwards edition cost me a fraction of a from-scratch game because the expensive part (the engine) was already done.

The lesson I'd steal for any game

If your game has a core verb — answer, guess, build, match — try mirroring it. Not as a gimmick mode, but as a design exercise. The mirror finds every place where your design was leaning on the player's autopilot instead of doing real work. Some of those places are load-bearing (keep them). Some are lazy (fix them). I found both kinds.

And if you want to feel your own autopilot break in real time — try a dive in reverse:

🎯 Daily game: divekrillion.com
♾️ Endless mode: krillioninfinite.com
🔁 Backwards mode: krillioninfinite.online

All three are free, no download, works in any phone browser. Fair warning: the backwards one will make you feel briefly stupid in a way that is extremely fun.

Builders: have you ever mirrored a core mechanic? Did it expose something about the original you couldn't see before? Genuinely curious how far this trick generalizes.

Daily Games Don't Reset at Midnight: The Time zone Bug That Broke My Streaks

Mudassir Hussain — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 10:51:07 +0000

When I launched my daily word game, three players emailed me on the same morning — from three different countries — each insisting they were playing a different "today's game." They were all right. And that was the bug.

I run a small family of browser word games — Dive Krillion (the daily one), Krillion Infinite (endless), and Noillirk (the backwards edition). Same prompt-and-rarity engine, three sites. The hardest problem in the whole project wasn't the game. It was midnight.

The naive version (don't do this)

My first reset logic was one line of thinking: the day changes when the player's clock says so. Device-local midnight. It failed in every direction at once:

Players in different timezones were on different dives, so scores and the daily leaderboard compared people who had played different prompts.
Anyone could change their phone's date and unlock tomorrow's dive early.
"Today" on the share card didn't match "today" on the website.

The other naive option — server time (UTC) — is just as bad. Midnight UTC is 5 AM in Pakistan and the previous evening in New York. Half your players get the new daily game at a time that feels completely random.

Fix #1: one game, one canonical midnight

Dive Krillion is a shared daily ritual: everyone on Earth plays the same dive on the same day. That only works if "today" is defined in exactly one place. I picked a canonical timezone — midnight Eastern Time — and the whole game (prompt selection, streaks, leaderboard, the on-site countdown) runs on it.

The prompt itself is just an index into a 302-prompt bank: the number of calendar days since launch, computed in the canonical timezone. The trick that makes this reliable in JavaScript is to never do 24-hour arithmetic on timestamps. Days are not 86,400 seconds long — twice a year, in a DST-observing zone, they're 23 or 25 hours. Count calendar dates instead:

function diveIndex(date: Date, timeZone: string, epoch: string): number {
  const parts = new Intl.DateTimeFormat("en-US", {
    timeZone, year: "numeric", month: "2-digit", day: "2-digit",
  }).formatToParts(date);

  const get = (t: string) => Number(parts.find(p => p.type === t)!.value);
  const todayUtc = Date.UTC(get("year"), get("month") - 1, get("day"));

  const [ey, em, ed] = epoch.split("-").map(Number);
  const epochUtc = Date.UTC(ey, em - 1, ed);

  return Math.round((todayUtc - epochUtc) / 86_400_000);
}

Format the date in the target zone, rebuild it as a UTC calendar date, then subtract. DST can't hurt you, because you never measured hours — you counted dates.

Fix #2: the endless game gets the opposite rule

Krillion Infinite has no shared daily dive — it's personal, endless play. Forcing Eastern Time on it made no sense, so it resets at midnight, your local time. Same engine, opposite rule, chosen because the product is different: a shared ritual needs one clock; a personal game needs yours.

That split is written on both sites, in the FAQs, in plain language. Half of "timezone bugs" are actually expectation bugs — players forgive any rule except a hidden one.

The push-notification trap

The daily reminder push goes out once, globally, shortly after the canonical reset. That only works because Dive Krillion has one reset moment. Try to send a "your new dive is ready" push for a local-midnight game and you're either waking people at 3 AM in some zone or maintaining a per-timezone send queue. If you build a daily game, decide early which side of that trade you're on.

What I'd tell anyone building a daily game

Pick your reset semantics before your schema. Streaks, leaderboards, archives ("play yesterday's dive"), and notifications all inherit the decision.
Count calendar dates, never hours. The Intl.DateTimeFormat + Date.UTC pattern above is boring and correct, including on DST days.
One shared day = one timezone. Personal cadence = local time. Mixing them in one product confuses everyone.
Write the rule where players can see it. A countdown that says "Next dive in 04:12:33 (ET)" ends more support emails than any fix.

Try the three clocks

Daily dive (midnight ET): divekrillion.com
Endless (midnight, your time): krillioninfinite.com
Backwards edition: krillioninfinite.online

All free, no download. If you've shipped a daily game, I'm curious: which clock did you pick — and what did it break first?

How Morse Code Works: The Science, Timing, and Technology Behind Dots and Dashes

Mudassir Hussain — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:11:10 +0000

A historical-style illustration of the telegraph technology that helped turn Morse code into a practical long-distance communication system.

Before smartphones, fiber-optic networks, satellites, and instant messaging, sending information over long distances was a serious engineering problem.

A message could travel only as fast as the person, horse, train, or ship carrying it.

Then electrical telegraphy changed the equation.

Instead of physically transporting a message, engineers could convert information into electrical signals and send those signals through a wire. One of the most recognizable systems created during this period was Morse code.

At first glance, Morse code looks almost too simple to be useful:

. = dot
- = dash

But there is considerably more to it.

Morse code is a structured communication system involving signal duration, spacing, character encoding, transmission, and pattern recognition.

More than 180 years after its early development, International Morse Code remains an internationally recognized signaling system. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) currently lists Recommendation M.1677-1, International Morse Code, as in force.

What Is Morse Code?

Morse code is an encoding system that represents letters, numbers, punctuation, and other signals using combinations of short and long signals.

The two fundamental elements are:

Dot (.) — short signal
Dash (-) — long signal

For example:

A = .-
B = -...
C = -.-.
S = ...
O = ---

The famous SOS signal is:

... --- ...

Morse code isn't a language. It is an encoding method.

English, French, Spanish, and other languages can be represented using Morse because Morse does not determine the meaning of a sentence. It provides a way to represent characters as signals.

How Does Morse Code Actually Work?

This is where Morse code becomes more interesting.

A beginner might think Morse code is simply a list of dots and dashes. It isn't.

Timing is an essential part of the system.

International Morse Code uses specific relationships between signal lengths and spaces.

Timing Element	Duration	Purpose
Dot	1 unit	Basic signal duration
Dash	3 units	Long signal
Element gap	1 unit	Separates dots and dashes inside one character
Character gap	3 units	Separates individual characters
Word gap	7 units	Separates words

These timing relationships are defined in the International Morse Code recommendation published by the International Telecommunication Union.

For a more detailed explanation of signal duration, character spacing, word spacing, WPM, and Morse timing, see the Morse code timing guide .

For example:

.... . .-.. .-.. ---

The sequence can be divided into:

Morse	Letter
`....`	H
`.`	E
`.-..`	L
`.-..`	L
`---`	O

The result is HELLO.

Morse Code Is More Than Dots and Dashes

This is one of the most common misconceptions about Morse code.

People sometimes describe Morse as a binary system because it has two primary signal types.

But Morse code isn't equivalent to simply:

0
1

Why?

Because time carries information.

A dot and dash are not merely two different symbols. They have different durations.

There are also different durations of silence separating parts of a character, different characters, and different words.

Morse code is a timed signaling system that uses short and long signals plus structured spacing.

This is why Morse can work through sound, radio, light, electrical pulses, or even physical tapping.

Morse Code Alphabet

The International Morse alphabet contains codes for the 26 letters of the English alphabet.

If you want a complete A–Z reference with the International Morse patterns, see this detailed Morse code alphabet reference.

International Morse code alphabet reference showing the A–Z character patterns.

Letter	Morse	Letter	Morse
A	`.-`	N	`-.`
B	`-...`	O	`---`
C	`-.-.`	P	`.--.`
D	`-..`	Q	`--.-`
E	`.`	R	`.-.`
F	`..-.`	S	`...`
G	`--.`	T	`-`
H	`....`	U	`..-`
I	`..`	V	`...-`
J	`.---`	W	`.--`
K	`-.-`	X	`-..-`
L	`.-..`	Y	`-.--`
M	`--`	Z	`--..`

A useful way to learn the alphabet is to avoid memorizing all 26 characters at once.

Start with simple patterns:

E = .
T = -
I = ..
M = --
S = ...
O = ---

Morse Code Numbers Have a Simple Pattern

The numbers are surprisingly easy to learn once you notice their structure.

Number	Morse Code
0	`-----`
1	`.----`
2	`..---`
3	`...--`
4	`....-`
5	`.....`
6	`-....`
7	`--...`
8	`---..`
9	`----.`

Notice the pattern: the sequence gradually moves from dots toward dashes. 5 is five dots, while 0 is five dashes.

Where Did Morse Code Come From?

Morse code developed alongside the electric telegraph during the 19th century.

Samuel F. B. Morse is the person most commonly associated with the invention, but the historical development involved other important contributors, particularly Alfred Vail.

The Library of Congress documents Morse's work on the telegraph and his collaboration with Vail.

The telegraph provided a way to transmit electrical signals over long distances, while Morse code provided a practical way to represent information within those signals.

The 1844 Message That Changed Communication

Historical-style illustration representing the first famous Morse telegraph transmission in 1844.

On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse sent the famous message:

“What hath God wrought?”

The message was transmitted from the Supreme Court chamber in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., to Alfred Vail in Baltimore, Maryland.

The experimental telegraph line was approximately 40 miles (about 64 km) long.

The U.S. Congress had appropriated $30,000 for the experimental Washington–Baltimore telegraph line.

In 1844, transmitting meaningful information across roughly 40 miles using electrical signals was a major technological achievement.

American Morse vs. International Morse Code

The earliest American telegraph system did not use exactly the same code that is known today as International Morse Code.

The original system became known as American Morse. Later, the code was modified and standardized internationally.

This distinction matters because modern searches for terms such as Morse code alphabet, Morse code chart, and International Morse generally refer to the international system.

Why Is E Just One Dot?

One interesting characteristic of Morse code is that some letters have extremely short representations.

E = .
T = -
I = ..
M = --

The short representations make the system efficient for frequently occurring characters.

The Story Behind SOS

A historical-style illustration representing Morse code SOS and maritime distress signaling.

Few Morse signals are as famous as:

... --- ...

SOS

A common misconception is that SOS officially stands for “Save Our Ship” or “Save Our Souls.”

Those phrases became popular interpretations, but the signal itself is fundamentally a Morse distress signal.

If you want to see the signal broken down visually, visit this guide to SOS in Morse code .

S = ...
O = ---
S = ...

Three short signals, three long signals, and three short signals. Its symmetry makes it easy to recognize.

How Morse Code Was Used in Telegraphy

The basic telegraph workflow looked something like this:

Written message
      ↓
Morse encoding
      ↓
Telegraph key
      ↓
Electrical signal
      ↓
Telegraph wire
      ↓
Receiving equipment
      ↓
Morse decoding
      ↓
Readable message

The operator was an important part of the system.

Human operators had to send, receive, interpret, and often transcribe messages. Speed, accuracy, timing, and concentration could directly affect the quality of communication.

Morse Code and Amateur Radio

Morse code continues to be practiced by amateur radio operators using telegraph keys and radio equipment.

Morse code survived the decline of commercial telegraphy partly through radio communication.

It remains associated with amateur radio, where Morse transmission is commonly called CW, meaning continuous wave.

Morse code is still practiced by radio operators because it provides a distinctive communication method that depends heavily on listening, timing, and pattern recognition.

Why Morse Code Is Still Useful

1. Simple Signaling

It requires only distinguishable short and long signals.

2. Multiple Transmission Methods

Morse can be communicated using:

Sound
Radio
Light
Electrical signals
Flashing lights
Tapping

3. Human-Readable Encoding

A person can learn to encode and decode Morse without requiring sophisticated computing equipment.

4. Strong Pattern Structure

The system naturally lends itself to rhythm, pattern recognition, and repetitive practice.

How to Learn Morse Code Faster

If you're trying to learn Morse code, don't start by memorizing a giant alphabet chart.

Use a progression.

Step 1: Learn the Simplest Characters

E = .
T = -
I = ..
M = --
S = ...
O = ---

Step 2: Learn by Sound

Don't only read Morse visually. Try to recognize the rhythm of each signal by sound.

Step 3: Practice Short Words

SOS
HELLO
RADIO
CODE
MORSE

Step 4: Decode Before Checking

Try to decode a message yourself first. Then use a free Morse code translator to verify your answer.

This turns a translator into a learning tool instead of a replacement for learning.

Step 5: Practice Both Directions

You should become comfortable with both:

Text → Morse
Morse → Text

For example:

HELLO

becomes:

.... . .-.. .-.. ---

If you want to translate text into Morse code quickly, an online tool can generate the signal patterns while you focus on learning them.

When you receive a longer Morse message, a dedicated Morse code decoder can also help you verify your manual interpretation.

A Simple 15-Minute Morse Practice Routine

Time	Activity	Goal
0–3 min	Review 5–10 characters	Build recognition
3–8 min	Listen to random Morse	Improve audio recognition
8–12 min	Decode short words	Improve accuracy
12–15 min	Send Morse yourself	Improve timing and rhythm

The important thing is consistency. Ten or fifteen focused minutes every day can be more useful than one long session once a week.

Common Morse Code Mistakes

Mistake 1: Memorizing Everything at Once

The alphabet has 26 letters, but you don't need to learn all 26 on day one.

Mistake 2: Counting Every Dot and Dash

Eventually, you want to recognize a character as one complete pattern.

Mistake 3: Ignoring Timing

A dash isn't simply another symbol. It is a signal with a different duration.

Mistake 4: Practicing Only Text-to-Morse

You also need to practice decoding Morse back into text.

Mistake 5: Depending Completely on a Translator

Tools are useful for checking your work. They shouldn't replace practice.

Morse Code vs. Binary Code

Morse code and binary code are sometimes compared because both can represent information using limited signal states.

Feature	Morse Code	Binary
Basic elements	Dot and dash	0 and 1
Timing	Essential to signaling	Depends on implementation
Spacing	Part of Morse operation	Depends on encoding protocol
Historical use	Telegraph and radio signaling	Computing and digital electronics
Human decoding	Possible with training	Usually requires a defined encoding scheme

The important distinction is that Morse uses signal duration and spacing as part of its communication structure, while binary is a numerical representation system.

If you want to experiment with binary representations, you can also use a binary code translator .

Why Morse Code Still Matters

Morse code is interesting because it solves a problem that modern communication systems still have:

How do we represent information in a form that can be transmitted and reconstructed reliably?

In 1844, the answer involved electrical pulses traveling through telegraph wires.

Today, similar fundamental challenges appear in:

Fiber-optic communication
Wireless networks
Satellite communication
Digital electronics
Computer networks
Mobile communication

The technologies are dramatically more sophisticated, but the underlying concept—encode information into signals—is still fundamental.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Morse code still used?

Yes. International Morse Code remains an established standard, and Morse continues to be used in areas including amateur radio.

What is SOS in Morse code?

SOS is:

... --- ...

It is internationally recognized as a distress signal.

Who invented Morse code?

Samuel F. B. Morse is the central figure associated with the system, but its development involved collaborators including Alfred Vail.

How long does it take to learn Morse code?

You can learn the basic alphabet relatively quickly, but practical proficiency requires repeated listening, decoding, and sending practice.

What is International Morse Code?

International Morse Code is the standardized version used internationally and documented by the International Telecommunication Union in Recommendation M.1677-1.

Can Morse code be used without a telegraph?

Yes. Morse can be transmitted through sound, radio, light, electrical signals, and other forms of signaling.

Final Thoughts

Morse code is easy to underestimate.

At first, it looks like nothing more than:

.
-

But behind those two simple signals is a complete communication system based on encoding, timing, spacing, transmission, and decoding.

The 1844 Washington-to-Baltimore telegraph demonstration showed that electrical signals could carry meaningful information over roughly 40 miles. The historic transmission helped demonstrate the practical potential of electrical communication.

More than a century later, International Morse Code remains recognized by the ITU.

If you're exploring practical Morse phrases, you can also see how "help me" in Morse code is represented as a real-world example.

The telegraph may have disappeared from everyday life, but Morse code did not completely disappear with it.

And that's what makes it so interesting.

A system built from two simple signal types helped push communication from the physical age into the electrical age.

One dot. One dash. One pause—and a message can cross the distance.

DEV Community: Mudassir Hussain

I Built a Word Game You Play Backwards — Here's What It Did to My Brain

Your brain retrieves words forward-only

Mirroring the design, not just the letters

What playtesting the mirror taught me about the original

The lesson I'd steal for any game

Daily Games Don't Reset at Midnight: The Time zone Bug That Broke My Streaks

The naive version (don't do this)

Fix #1: one game, one canonical midnight

Fix #2: the endless game gets the opposite rule

The push-notification trap

What I'd tell anyone building a daily game

Try the three clocks

How Morse Code Works: The Science, Timing, and Technology Behind Dots and Dashes

What Is Morse Code?

How Does Morse Code Actually Work?

Morse Code Is More Than Dots and Dashes

Morse Code Alphabet

Morse Code Numbers Have a Simple Pattern

Where Did Morse Code Come From?

The 1844 Message That Changed Communication

American Morse vs. International Morse Code

Why Is E Just One Dot?

The Story Behind SOS

How Morse Code Was Used in Telegraphy

Morse Code and Amateur Radio

Why Morse Code Is Still Useful

1. Simple Signaling

2. Multiple Transmission Methods

3. Human-Readable Encoding

4. Strong Pattern Structure

How to Learn Morse Code Faster

Step 1: Learn the Simplest Characters

Step 2: Learn by Sound

Step 3: Practice Short Words

Step 4: Decode Before Checking

Step 5: Practice Both Directions

A Simple 15-Minute Morse Practice Routine

Common Morse Code Mistakes

Mistake 1: Memorizing Everything at Once

Mistake 2: Counting Every Dot and Dash

Mistake 3: Ignoring Timing

Mistake 4: Practicing Only Text-to-Morse

Mistake 5: Depending Completely on a Translator

Morse Code vs. Binary Code

Why Morse Code Still Matters

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Morse code still used?

What is SOS in Morse code?

Who invented Morse code?

How long does it take to learn Morse code?

What is International Morse Code?

Can Morse code be used without a telegraph?

Final Thoughts

Sources and Further Reading