Ogle runs on my TV now: the board on the big screen, everyone tracing words on their own phone, and a small server on the Mac mini keeping score. That’s how Netflix runs its party games, and it’s how I wanted to play Ogle with friends in the same room. Ogle already has our dictionary and our rules, and Dial already puts my own app on the TV, so game night was the piece in between: our game, on our TV, scored by our own backend. ...
On a trip to Tahoe my friends and I got hooked on Netflix’s Boggle. The best part was the end of each round, when it reveals the words and their points one at a time. The part I’d change was the dictionary: Netflix leaves out slang and rude words. So I had Claude Code build our own. The point was to set our own rules and dictionary, and to grow it into a private league for the five of us instead of making a clone. My friends ogled over that game in Tahoe, so ours is called Ogle. It’s live at play.derek.engineer/ogle, and it went from first commit to live between Sunday night and Wednesday morning. ...