List animals until failure

by l1n on 2/1/2026, 1:03:23 AM

Comments

by: themk

One of the few sites with a fun "you have javascript turned off" message.> This game requires JavaScript. Or, if you've superior taste, take out a pen and paper and start listing animals.

2/1/2026, 5:41:27 AM

by: apt-apt-apt-apt

Lazy daisy:<pre><code> (async () => { for (c of 'red black white brown blue green yellow golden grey arctic mountain forest spotted striped'.split(' ')) for (a of 'bear lion tiger wolf fox eagle shark whale snake frog cat dog horse bat rat mouse owl hawk duck crab ant bee spider deer penguin elephant rabbit'.split(' ')) { guessbox.value = c + ' ' + a; uncomment(); attempt(); await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 75)); } })();</code></pre>

2/1/2026, 6:01:34 AM

by: kyle-rb

Presumably inspired by this tweet: <a href="https://x.com/Fredward3948576/status/1763363909669388588" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/Fredward3948576/status/1763363909669388588</a>

2/1/2026, 4:59:18 AM

by: tptacek

No LLMs is impressive. Also recognizes "drop bear". Well played.

2/1/2026, 5:07:55 AM

by: themanmaran

68. The unique title texts are really fun. But I strongly disagree that "chipmunks are squirrels".

2/1/2026, 4:43:50 AM

by: lepolas

This was fun. I definitely could feel the fatigue slowing me down until the timer got me. I also wasted a bunch of time trying to spell specific animals like the wobbegong.I like the emoji output as well: 203 animals listed:𓃬𓆊 𓃜𓃘𓅱𓆉𓅃

2/1/2026, 5:12:33 AM

by: jammaloo

267, I was going pretty strong and had about 2 minutes racked up, until I hit a wall, and couldn't think of anything else. Thinking in groups helped the most, e.g. reptiles, flightless birds, african animals, etc.Extinct animals also work, including the dinosaurs!

2/1/2026, 5:39:47 AM

by: the_fall

It might be an interesting LLM benchmark: how many can they list without breaking the rules (repetition or non-animals). Although I bet that big bucks would be then thrown at pointlessly optimizing for that benchmark, so...

2/1/2026, 4:34:10 AM

by: cellis

79. I feel like i should have done better but got stuck in a local minima of "farm animals, which obvious farm animals haven't I said??", then tried thinking of names of fish which worked until it didn't.

2/1/2026, 5:53:38 AM

by: maxbond

I got 42. I was very impressed by how it handled more and less specific categories. It also understood rotifers were a microscopic animal, which I half expected not to work. Great project.

2/1/2026, 4:41:52 AM

by: yuppiepuppie

Nice! I added this to the HN Arcade <a href="https://andrewgy8.github.io/hnarcade/games/games/list-animals-until-failure" rel="nofollow">https://andrewgy8.github.io/hnarcade/games/games/list-animal...</a>

2/1/2026, 5:45:00 AM

by: divbzero

Instead of trying to think of just any animal, I found it easier to add a constraint…1. Animal that starts with A2. Animal that starts with B3. Animal that starts with C…(I also appreciated the easter eggs: “Are you Australian?” and “You listed both dingos and dogs, so I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but there's disagreement on whether the dingo is its own species of canid, a subspecies of grey wolf, or simply a breed of dog.”)

2/1/2026, 4:46:54 AM

by: helloplanets

For anyone wondering: This is based on basic text parsing and a key-value lookup table, no AI involved whatsoever.Here's the table: <a href="https://rose.systems/animalist/lower_title_to_id.js" rel="nofollow">https://rose.systems/animalist/lower_title_to_id.js</a>

2/1/2026, 4:39:17 AM

by: dudewhocodes

Accepts the word "human" as well.update: Start with "human" or "homo sapiens" and the website keeps changing as you add new words.

2/1/2026, 5:08:14 AM

by: adt2bt

157. Very neat! Started a, b, c then found much more success when thinking about biomes (sea, mountains, forest, jungle, etc).

2/1/2026, 5:06:20 AM

by: ViscountPenguin

Possum => opossum is erroneous. I was planning to list both species, it wasnt a typo.

2/1/2026, 5:19:08 AM

by: nxtfari

there are so many special cases that this game responds to, i was shocked that it didn’t involve an llm at all at the end. very cool.

2/1/2026, 4:36:33 AM

by: schnaars

This is awesome. I made it to 100, but I know jack about animals.

2/1/2026, 5:47:42 AM

by: rogual

140. Good fun. I like how it teaches you things, too. I learned that toads are considered frogs, axolotls are salamanders, and that it's "anemone" not "anenome". If you type in Unicorn it accepts it as "Unicorn spider" with a fun message. Don't forget to think of insects, birds and fish too, all of which it accepts. I love this kind of detailed, handcrafted thing that someone put a lot of time and effort into.If you wanted to develop this more, some fun features might be telling you the most commonly entered animals you missed and the most unusual ones you thought of. Appreciate you probably want to keep it a static site though.

2/1/2026, 4:57:47 AM

by:

2/1/2026, 4:45:46 AM

by: echelon

106, I feel like I should have done much better. (I feel like I cheated by naming a lot of dinosaurs and insects.)The clown emoji is great. :)

2/1/2026, 4:53:38 AM

by: cvhc

49 as ESL speaker. Fun little game to practice English words :)

2/1/2026, 4:55:39 AM

by: jojobas

Some animals replace vaguer definitions, but say "snake" is there forever, no cobra or viper for you. Strange.

2/1/2026, 5:55:46 AM

by: ivanech

this was really delightful. The Easter eggs in particular made it feel like someone was actually on the other side

2/1/2026, 5:09:53 AM

by: TZubiri

The background is alternating between cyan and black, which is very distracting. Not sure if that's on purpose.

2/1/2026, 5:28:24 AM

by: disillusioned

205 and I very much was scraping the bottom of the barrel at the end. Starting a bit generic and adding specificity helped a lot. The little meta-commentary was great. "you already said dogs. dogs are dogs." when I tried "golden retrievers" after already typing dogs.

2/1/2026, 5:34:59 AM

by: Buildstarted

drop bear => Already said Koala. but if you type it before you say koala the answer drops from the top of the page. so many great easter eggs. got 92 in the end

2/1/2026, 4:50:45 AM

by: bitwize

ARE YOU THINKING OF AN ANIMAL? yesDOES IT SWIM? noIS IT A BIRD?<a href="https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=4" rel="nofollow">https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=4</a>

2/1/2026, 5:05:22 AM

by: mberning

It accepted tardigrade which I thought was interesting.

2/1/2026, 4:58:05 AM

by: kalmyk

lots of animals

2/1/2026, 5:23:39 AM

by: Cyphase

95. Definitely feel like I should have done better; will try another time with more sleep.

2/1/2026, 5:12:10 AM

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