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Selcouth
Guess the missing word in Melville, Woolf, and Dostoevsky
I built Selcouth because I wanted to read more closely. It blanks one word in a passage from writers like Dickens, Cather, or Hardy and asks: what did the author choose? Guessing means noticing everything else in the passage. Rare words pay more, and the ones you love go into a commonplace book with the passages that held them. Everything runs offline; packs are one-time purchases; no ads, no daily streaks. It's a quiet game about why great writing is great.
I'm Zach. I made Selcouth to spend more time with the authors I love.
The game: you get a real passage from Chopin, Brontë, or Melville with one word missing, and you put it back. Not a word that fits; the word they wrote. Guessing means noticing everything else: the rhythm, the register, the image being built. No definitions to look up, no timer; just you and the sentence, weighing words the way the writer did. Words you love go into a commonplace book, alongside the passages that held them.
For the builders here, the part I enjoyed most: it's all a Python pipeline over Standard Ebooks' public-domain editions. It reads each book, scores every candidate blank for whether you can honestly solve it from context alone, and an LLM judge throws out the ones you can't. The wrong answers get the same treatment: generated as candidates, then screened locally, so every decoy tempts without ever being right. Everything ships as one SQLite file, so the app is fully offline. No account, no ads, no tracking. Thirty complete books with over 9,195 passages are free; further shelves are one-time purchases.
Try one, from Moby Dick:
"And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild head overhung by a ___ of vapor... glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts."
shelter, tapestry, or canopy?
Guess below and I'll tell you whether Melville agrees. And I'd love to hear which book you'd want on these shelves next.
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About Selcouth on Product Hunt
“Guess the missing word in Melville, Woolf, and Dostoevsky”
Selcouth was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 2 upvotes and 1 comments, placing #110 on the daily leaderboard. I built Selcouth because I wanted to read more closely. It blanks one word in a passage from writers like Dickens, Cather, or Hardy and asks: what did the author choose? Guessing means noticing everything else in the passage. Rare words pay more, and the ones you love go into a commonplace book with the passages that held them. Everything runs offline; packs are one-time purchases; no ads, no daily streaks. It's a quiet game about why great writing is great.
Selcouth was featured in iOS (110.7k followers), Games (98.8k followers) and Books (122.6k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 77.7k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Selcouth?
Selcouth was hunted by Zach Proffitt. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
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Zach Proffitt
Hi Product Hunt,
I'm Zach. I made Selcouth to spend more time with the authors I love.
The game: you get a real passage from Chopin, Brontë, or Melville with one word missing, and you put it back. Not a word that fits; the word they wrote. Guessing means noticing everything else: the rhythm, the register, the image being built. No definitions to look up, no timer; just you and the sentence, weighing words the way the writer did. Words you love go into a commonplace book, alongside the passages that held them.
For the builders here, the part I enjoyed most: it's all a Python pipeline over Standard Ebooks' public-domain editions. It reads each book, scores every candidate blank for whether you can honestly solve it from context alone, and an LLM judge throws out the ones you can't. The wrong answers get the same treatment: generated as candidates, then screened locally, so every decoy tempts without ever being right. Everything ships as one SQLite file, so the app is fully offline. No account, no ads, no tracking. Thirty complete books with over 9,195 passages are free; further shelves are one-time purchases.
Try one, from Moby Dick:
"And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild head overhung by a ___ of vapor... glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts."
shelter, tapestry, or canopy?
Guess below and I'll tell you whether Melville agrees. And I'd love to hear which book you'd want on these shelves next.