How I Built a Word Game with ChatGPT

I didn’t come up with the idea for One Off — ChatGPT did.

One night I asked it: “Can you invent a new kind of word game?” It came back with this cool idea. You get one starting word, and you have to find all the real English words that are just one letter different. You can change a letter, add a letter, or remove one — but no mixing things up. Just one small step each time.

I thought, wow, that actually sounds fun. So I decided to build it.

But here’s the thing: I don’t have a full team of designers and developers. It’s just me. So I did what I’ve started doing more and more lately — I kept talking to ChatGPT. I told it what I was trying to make, and it helped me figure out how to actually do it.

For example, when you start with a word like “stone,” there are hundreds of possible ways to change it by one letter. ChatGPT helped me write out all those variations. But most of them aren’t real words — “szone” or “xtone” won’t get you very far. So how do I check which ones are real?

ChatGPT helped me connect to an actual dictionary — the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the same one that’s been around forever. I used that to check each word and throw out the fake ones. What’s left is the answer list for that puzzle. That part all happens behind the scenes before the puzzle ever shows up on the website.

Then I had to figure out how the game should look and feel. I didn’t want anything flashy or complicated — just one screen, clean and simple. A place to show the starting word, let you type in guesses, and tell you if you’re right. ChatGPT helped me figure out how to lay everything out and fix little issues along the way — things like spacing, buttons, making sure it worked on phones.

One of my favorite parts is something you don’t see as a player. When I make a new puzzle, I just log in to a private control panel, type in a new starting word, and click a button. That button automatically figures out all the real one-off words for that puzzle. ChatGPT helped me set that up too.

This whole thing came together way faster than I expected — not because I rushed, but because I had help every step of the way. ChatGPT wasn’t just giving me answers. It felt like building something with a friend. One Off exists because of that collaboration.

It’s a small game. Just one word a day, one simple rule. But there’s something really satisfying about building something from scratch — especially when it starts with a random question and turns into something you can share with the world.

To play click here