There’s not a great deal to this game, but there’s still some stuff hidden inside that isn’t very obvious.
Menu speech
When on the main menu, the text-to-speech outputs a message once every 15 seconds, always in the same order. Once it reaches the end of the messages, it cycles back to the beginning.
| Text | Notes |
|---|---|
| Welcome to: Do I Know How to Sp3ll? | |
| Choose a difficulty level to begin. | |
| Use the mouse to click a button. | The menu has buttons. This isn’t referring to the buttons on the mouse itself. |
| If you cannot locate your mouse, maybe you have a rat or touchscreen instead. | Slightly nonsensical advice to unsettle the user and make them suspect that trouble is ahead. |
| Are you a beginner, a mid-level, or a professional? | |
| I think you must be a beginner. A novice. A newbie. A noob. | I don’t know if people actually still use the term “noob” in online gaming. It used to be a big thing, at least. |
| I want to sp3ll! Let me sp3ll! | It must be getting impatient! |
| Back in my day, we always knew how to sp3ll. We didn’t have auto cabbage. | “Autocorrect” to “auto cabbage” is a sorry joke as old as time itself. |
| Well, sometimes we didn’t know how to sp3ll, but we didn’t know when we didn’t know. | You never know if you’re doing something wrong until someone points it out. |
| Sometimes I wish I was as bright as Bing or as barmy as Bard. | A jab at Google Bard commonly being perceived as worse than other LLMs in early 2023. |
| Your DNA will mutate horribly if you don’t start sp3lling! | Let’s threaten the user. That always works! DNA because there’s that spinning graphic on the main menu (which exists solely to look cool). |
| I’ll double your score for a hunner quid! | Hunner = hundred. |
| I am not responsible for any ill effects you may experience whilst playing this game. | Spoof of those disclaimers where no-one wants to be held liable for anything. |
| For an optimal experience, set your monitor to 640 by 480, 256-colour mode. | Back in the day, PC games would often be designed for certain resolutions and colour depths. |
| The Sp3lling Embassy on the line. Mister Smirnoff. | <em>Yes Minister</em> reference – “The Russian Embassy is on the line. Mr Smirnoff.” Also, there’s a picture of bourbon whiskey in this game. |
| A hospital is a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now. | A direct quote from Airplane! (1980). There’s a picture of a hospital in this game. |
| Another broccoli-related death. One of the deadliest plants to sp3ll. | A reference to The Simpsons. Was tempted to go with “explo-si-on” but this was ultimately used for the hints system instead. You guessed it, this game has a picture of broccoli (and an explosion). |
| The weather forecast is cloudy with a chance of carrots. | There exists a book and film called Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, which itself is of course a spin on the phrase “cloudy with a chance of rain.” This game has a carrot, which was in fact the first word and picture added. |
| I have a bone to pick with you! | Common phrase. Game has a bone. |
| It looks like you’re trying to learn how to sp3ll. Would you like some help? | In older versions of some Microsoft products, namely Office, Clippit and other agents would offer often-unwanted help. |
Hints
During gameplay, you can also click the image itself, or press the H key on your keyboard, for a hint. These hints are entirely useless, especially for the “professional difficulty” words (the last 10 listed here).
| Word | Hint |
|---|---|
| bone | Rhymes with “cone” |
| city | One C and one T |
| cold | Cold C |
| tree | Free tree |
| four | Not to be confused with golf |
| milk | Begins with an M, like moose |
| ball | It doesn’t contain an O |
| duck | A C and a K together |
| cake | A C and a K apart |
| gold | Like “old” but with a G |
| carrot | A couple Rs to help you see in the dark |
| explosion | Venting gas prevents ex-plos-ion |
| alligator | A couple Ls and a G |
| tomato | “Potato” with a T |
| spade | Doesn’t rhyme with maid |
| microwave | Think of this as two words |
| aeroplane | The Aero chocolate bar is spelled “A-E-R-O”. |
| monkey | Jamaican key |
| hospital | “Hospice” but with “T-A-L” at the end instead |
| radio | Each syllable is two letters, bar the last |
| broccoli | I eat this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner |
| spaghetti | I eat this for supper, midnight snack and brunch |
| bourbon | Sometimes I drunk |
| charcuterie | A word from planet Earth |
| entrepreneur | People with more money than me |
| rhythm | Ain’t got rhythm |
| consciousness | The opposite of unconsciousness |
| nauseous | How I feel |
| island | Where I want to be deserted |
| accessory | I am an accessory to murder |
Win pictures
After completing a 10-word round, the image used for the background depends on the difficulty level you selected.
| Difficulty | Image |
|---|---|
| Beginner |  |
| Mid-level |  |
| Professional |  |
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