What started as a challenge to myself and a way to beat the heat became something more. I have have a resource with 60 HTML games in about two dozen categories. Most are Spanish games, with a sprinkling of multilingual ones. The irony is that this project started with one of the latter ones and then I went all in on Spanish datasets I found or engineered. All of the code blocks come courtesy of ChatGPT. All through this process, I learned a good deal about prompt crafting and patience, neither of which I am much better at, admittedly, but I’m trying.

WORD GAMES GALORE

The emoji games were oddly easy. ChatGPT had an intuitive sense of those both in categories and idiomatic expressions. The definition ones were an exercise in list construction and concatenation. Surprisingly, the binary choice games ( e.g. ¿B de BURRO V de VACA? and ¿EL o LA?) were harder than they should have been. The Wacky Wordle mashup was overly complicated in concept and execution. I imagined getting to two or three letters to go would help me and learners on the way, but it did not play like that. The syllable game is something that can help with something teachers tend to more through too quickly: proper-towards-poetic pronunciation. The CADENA game is the one I am proudest of, as it seems to represent a step in the right direction for game concept and design. I have played this before, analog and on the fly, but never with a 12K word glossary.

I recognize the UI is wonky just as I realize that there are words missing and-or miscategorized. Nevertheless, the fact that I can do this means I can roll it out as a resource for students and enlist some help from the coders and creative thinkers to build on the concept.

I have provided some sample code so that teachers and learners cana build their own. I will try to add more games and samples as I go. I will close, for now, but recognizing further that HTML code is nowhere near cutting edge. Colby College professor Barbara Kuczun Nelson created grammar modules two decades ago that still hold up. Solid Spanish has not changed; what has changed is the availability and scalability of generative AI tools. To my point above, used ChatGPT for both the code and the language content, something approaching 93% / 7%

I wish I could my effort off in a more dynamic space but my limitations are my work with ChatGPT and my ability to host it anywhere accessible… for me and others. I also know that hosting 12K values in the code instead of making a call is awkward, but it “awkworks” for me in this case. Finally, I recognize that this Google Site “awkworks” on a computer screen but sub-optimally on mobile. (Turning landscape helps.)

As I stated, if the frameworks hold up and the games are fun, I can migrate and iterate.

Game time! ¡A jugar!