Show HN: A Daily Bible Game (opens in new tab)

I tried [redacted] and [redacted] first as well.*

Perhaps I should make it clearer that correctly identifying the book on the first try is not the expectation. Maybe I will add a clarification that the goal is "as few guesses as possible" or maybe "as few guesses as you can".

It's quite a variable challenge. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not. (Usually it's not.) I appreciate your feedback.

*Despite them both being in the same section. Oops.

I don't think you should be posting the answer to the current question unobfuscated, especially when there's no way for curious readers to get any other question after having that one spoiled (other than waiting for, at the moment, 7 hours or so).

It's not quite true that "it genuinely could have been from any OT book". First, when you make a guess it doesn't just tell you whether you got the book right, it also tells you whether you got the right section (major prophets, gospels, etc.). So if you guess that something's from Isaiah, after that you will at least know whether it's from Ezekiel or not.

I agree that this one could be from almost-but-not-quite anywhere in the OT, but bear in mind that the target audience (1) may well have read the whole thing multiple times and (2) may well have a good idea of the "tone" of various different books.

(I've been a godless heathen for many years, though I was a Christian for many years before that. In the present case my first guess was the same as yours but I didn't try your second guess, not only because of the can't-be-in-that-section thing but because I have a pretty good idea what sort of thing is in that book and I don't think there's much there that reads like this verse. It did, none the less, take me quite a lot of guesses. If I were still in the habit of reading the Bible a lot I expect I'd have done better. Which is kinda the point.)

Proverbs and Psalms are both in the same section (wisdom), which is one of the very few mechanics the game has to help you narrow things down.

Took me 5 guesses, only after guessing 4 other Old Testament books from 4 different categories (major prophets, wisdom, law, and history). Definitely a pretty challenging one.

the "Old|New Testament" and "Section" clues are enough to make it not impossible (and also more "wordle"-like)

more like "guess who" in taking out entire categories

Job is mentioned in Ezekiel in the Old Testament and in James in the New Testament. Jonah is mentioned in 2 Kings in the Old Testament, and several times in the New Testament.

Thank you! I've noticed that a lot of other well-loved "daily" puzzle games are more elegant in terms of game design (Wordle, Bandle, LoLdle are some of my favorites) so I'm a bit worried that the current design is a little flat/boring. I've been trying to brainstorm ways to make it more interesting without making it too challenging or unintuitive.

Thank you. I was overjoyed at the initial response and surprised and disheartened to see it get flagged. I emailed HN's moderators to get clarification and see if there's anything I could have done better.

Great question. It picks a random book first (out of the 66 non-Deuterocanonical books (so far)) and then a random group of 3 back-to-back verses from that book. That way it's not weighted towards books with more of verses, which I wanted to avoid. It doesn't try to equalize between old/new testament.

Thank you so much for noticing. I didn't even know there was a difference between Orthodox/Catholic and Protestant canons until a week after the site was live.

I spent a decent amount of time trying to add the Deuterocanonical books. Ultimately I put it on hold, because I was worried that adding those books would make a challenging game even harder (at least for my initial audience of 20 family and friends). I also wondered if adding those books would put off any Protestant visitors... but I see their omission has caught your attention, that's Orthodox 1, Protestant 0. I'll find an elegant way to work them in.

And I never thought of adding an RSS feed! I'll add that to the todo!

It's related to John 2:23-25. He's not saying you should not have friends or trust anyone. He's saying you should not seek or hope anything from humans that only God can actually provide. It's related to codependence and similar character flaws. I think even atheists would agree that it's not healthy to want the objective approval and validation of inconstant people with imperfect judgment.

There's rather a lot in the Bible that no one would regard as suitable reading for children if it were from any other book.

Whoever is patient has great understanding, but one who is quick-tempered displays folly

Proverbs 14:29

Yeah I'd like to continue playing the game. Perhaps 10 verses before the limit kicks in to save on resources?

You want to speed-run the bible?

I'd like a 'true or false' game based on those quotes, but then it might be unbalanced.

It's a global verse that everyone gets, which resets at midnight. That way people can compare their guesses to the same verse every day.

There are hints in the style of writing which can place things pretty quickly.

It's pretty easy to tell that something is old or new testament based on the writing styles. What's hard is the OT has a fair number of similar writers and a lot of books. The first question I got was [redacted] (lol) which is really hard to track down as they all sound the same to me.

Edit I didn't realize everyone had the same question. So pulled out the hint.

Based on my initial audience, it's definitely not common. The Christians I know have different levels of familiarity with the books of the Bible.

Personally, I know Genesis/Exodus, Psalms, and the Gospels well. I can recognize Epistles on sight, but identifying the exact one is really just a guessing game. Most everything else I am not familiar with and will take me a while to guess.

I think that's why people have enjoyed it so far, because of the tradeoff of getting a verse you recognize (so you can guess the book quickly) or getting an unfamiliar verse (so you get to expand your familiarity with the Bible).

Yes. Many of us read it multiple times a year.

You can guess from the content and style. For example, I could easily see today's quote was Old Testament even though its not one I know, although I did not guess the book, successfully.

I do not know the Bible particularly well compared to many other people, and I know the New Testament better than the Old (not uncommon - its both smaller and more important to Christians).

I absolutely would pass this kind of quiz 100% with any New Testament quote, thanks to having put Life and Truth Dramatized Audio New Testament on in the background literally 24/7 for a few years straight. Also John Rhys-Davies reads Hebrews so well with his classical training and Welsh accent that it's hard not to memorize large parts of it verbatim.

A lot of christians will start a "Bible In One Year" program at the beginning of the year. Kind of like the gym resolution. Sometimes it will take a few years to read the whole Bible, and then you start the cycle again. There's lots of different plans out there.

KJV is beautiful and out of copyright so free to download (except technically in the UK where the original monopoly is in force) but not a great translation in terms of accuracy compared to more modern ones.

It also, of course, only contains the protestant canon.

There are more free translations. Not knowledgeable enough to recommend one. Mostly there is no significant difference, but of course there are passages and translations which are contested.

There are Bible apps which will let you install multiple translations and read them side by side. That plus a paper Bible (a good translation such as NRSV) goes a long way.

I'd look for the NRSV from Anna's archive. You should find a pretty good english translation epub there.

ebible.org has a number of Bible translations available in various formats.

NET and WEB are probably the best modern translations.

No really.

What translation is this? What part of the religion (Maccabees, Mormons)? Is there Ge'ez portions (46 book in OT!)? How about the dead sea scrolls?

I think, if it takes off with some of the probing from here, then adding in a harder mode with larger apocrypha or duterocanonical texts would be great. Maybe make a section where you can select the translation and sect you want to learn about.

I don’t think that a game involving uncontroversial facts about the history of politics (e.g. “guess the U.S. President") would be banned under HN’s rules either.

The guidelines say:

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. "

No mention of religion there, and it says "most politics" not all politics.

"Anything that good hackers would find interesting" and it seems reasonable for that to include philosophy, religion etc. and definitely an interesting web app is of interest.

This is less about religion directly and more about sharing a cool app imo.

Also, tbf, there are regular posts on the HN front page that I would consider "political". (Though I'm not bothered by them.)

I see this as the only possible logical conclusion