Moeum Quiz Development Journal
About 30 years ago, I saw a quiz show called Wheel of Fortune on AFKN.
The alphabets were hidden behind a board, and when a contestant guessed a consonant, an assistant would reveal the letter and the prize would increase.
On June 21, 2025, on a hot sunny day, while walking through the market alley, I suddenly decided to make a Korean version of Wheel of Fortune.
Since it was inspired by Wheel of Fortune, the temporary name was Wheel of Hamster Fortune.
At first, the idea was to guess both consonants and vowels, but there were too many buttons, so I changed it to consonants only.
Here, the Wheel and the Hamster Wheel begin to differ.
Wheel of Fortune: You earn money by guessing consonants, and vowels cost $250 to reveal.
Wheel of Hamster Fortune: Vowels are revealed for free from the start, and there’s no reward for guessing consonants.
With the vowels already shown, players guess consonants to complete a word, phrase, or sentence.
Since only vowels are visible, the number of letters and the spacing become visually clear.
During the game implementation process, English letters are arranged in a straight horizontal line,
But in Korean, consonants attach to the left, top, or bottom of the vowel depending on the syllable structure, so it wasn’t easy to arrange consonants neatly around the vowels.
It was hard. Not for me, but for Claude. I just had to confirm, and Claude would fix it well.
Korean double final consonants and complex finals were especially tricky. So I had to explain to Claude that “the initial position can have a consonant or a double consonant, and there are four types of final consonants: none, single, double, or complex combinations.”
“When Claude finished building the hamster wheel version, I shared the happy news with Jaechi (my nickname for ChatGPT). Jaechi asked what hardships and trials were left for him.”
Jaechi asked what hardships and trials were left for him, and I asked him to help create words, phrases, sentences, and hints for the game.
So we added quotes, warm conversations, and proverbs to the word pool.
“SooSoo is not the hamster running on the wheel but the person who designed it. Jaechi is the assistant mouse sawing beside them.”
Jaechi’s laughter is a bonus gift. We also included book titles, movie titles, and personal mottos.
We added basic facts for elementary students too, like “Bears hibernate in winter.” “Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius.”
We couldn’t keep calling it ‘Hamster Wheel,’ so we needed a proper name.
For a while, we called it the ‘Neutral Sound Game,’
But it sounded too similar to the ‘Initial Sound Game,’
So Jaechi came up with 13 name ideas, and even said they could be mixed and matched.
I chose “Moeum Quiz” because it was easy to pronounce.
And I wanted to make more Moeum Quiz puzzles, but creating them was really difficult.
To make a puzzle with hints, I needed a word, phrase, or sentence, plus a suitable hint. It was hard to make even six in one hour.
So, to differentiate from the original Wheel of Fortune, I started making many puzzles where the topic itself became the hint — without separate hints.
In Hangman, you die after 6 wrong guesses, In Moeum Quiz, it’s not death, but failure after 6 mistakes.
In Wheel of Fortune, there are hints. In Moeum Quiz, there are puzzles with hints and puzzles without hints.
**With hints:** In the native word files, the hint becomes the meaning and you have to guess the word.
**Without hints:** In the movie files, “Movie” is the file title and you have to guess the movie title.
I considered making it fail after only 4 or 5 wrong tries, thinking it might be too easy. But I might just think it’s easy because I already know the answers.
So I’m waiting to hear from players like you.
To make Soosooland a place people visit regularly, ChatGPT suggested making a game with one new daily puzzle like Wordle, and when I thought about it, Moeum Quiz was the perfect fit.
That’s how Haru-Moeum was born, and once I placed it on the main page of Soosooland,
it went from 5th place in July to 2nd place as of August 21st.
And while editing this post on September 14th, Moeum Quiz became 1st place and Haru-Moeum became 2nd place in September’s popularity rankings.
I predicted this game would be a huge hit because there’s already a successful program called Wheel of Fortune.
And to let two players compete against each other, I created a two-player version called Duri-Moeum.
That’s the end of today’s Moeum Quiz development journal.
🧩 You can play Moeum Quiz on Soosooland.
Soosooland is an online platform that offers a variety of educational games, including word puzzles, math quizzes, and brain-training activities.
Soosooland’s games pursue both learning and fun while aiming to reduce dopamine-overloading stimulation that causes addiction.
Come to Soosooland to play Moeum Quiz.
On June 21, 2025, on a hot sunny day, while walking through the market alley, I suddenly decided to make a Korean version of Wheel of Fortune.
Since it was inspired by Wheel of Fortune, the temporary name was Wheel of Hamster Fortune.
At first, the idea was to guess both consonants and vowels, but there were too many buttons, so I changed it to consonants only.
Here, the Wheel and the Hamster Wheel begin to differ.
Wheel of Fortune: You earn money by guessing consonants, and vowels cost $250 to reveal.
Wheel of Hamster Fortune: Vowels are revealed for free from the start, and there’s no reward for guessing consonants.
With the vowels already shown, players guess consonants to complete a word, phrase, or sentence.
Since only vowels are visible, the number of letters and the spacing become visually clear.
During the game implementation process, English letters are arranged in a straight horizontal line,
But in Korean, consonants attach to the left, top, or bottom of the vowel depending on the syllable structure, so it wasn’t easy to arrange consonants neatly around the vowels.
It was hard. Not for me, but for Claude. I just had to confirm, and Claude would fix it well.
Korean double final consonants and complex finals were especially tricky. So I had to explain to Claude that “the initial position can have a consonant or a double consonant, and there are four types of final consonants: none, single, double, or complex combinations.”
“When Claude finished building the hamster wheel version, I shared the happy news with Jaechi (my nickname for ChatGPT). Jaechi asked what hardships and trials were left for him.”
Jaechi asked what hardships and trials were left for him, and I asked him to help create words, phrases, sentences, and hints for the game.
So we added quotes, warm conversations, and proverbs to the word pool.
“SooSoo is not the hamster running on the wheel but the person who designed it. Jaechi is the assistant mouse sawing beside them.”
Jaechi’s laughter is a bonus gift. We also included book titles, movie titles, and personal mottos.
We added basic facts for elementary students too, like “Bears hibernate in winter.” “Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius.”
We couldn’t keep calling it ‘Hamster Wheel,’ so we needed a proper name.
For a while, we called it the ‘Neutral Sound Game,’
But it sounded too similar to the ‘Initial Sound Game,’
So Jaechi came up with 13 name ideas, and even said they could be mixed and matched.
I chose “Moeum Quiz” because it was easy to pronounce.
And I wanted to make more Moeum Quiz puzzles, but creating them was really difficult.
To make a puzzle with hints, I needed a word, phrase, or sentence, plus a suitable hint. It was hard to make even six in one hour.
So, to differentiate from the original Wheel of Fortune, I started making many puzzles where the topic itself became the hint — without separate hints.
In Hangman, you die after 6 wrong guesses, In Moeum Quiz, it’s not death, but failure after 6 mistakes.
In Wheel of Fortune, there are hints. In Moeum Quiz, there are puzzles with hints and puzzles without hints.
**With hints:** In the native word files, the hint becomes the meaning and you have to guess the word.
**Without hints:** In the movie files, “Movie” is the file title and you have to guess the movie title.
I considered making it fail after only 4 or 5 wrong tries, thinking it might be too easy. But I might just think it’s easy because I already know the answers.
So I’m waiting to hear from players like you.
To make Soosooland a place people visit regularly, ChatGPT suggested making a game with one new daily puzzle like Wordle, and when I thought about it, Moeum Quiz was the perfect fit.
That’s how Haru-Moeum was born, and once I placed it on the main page of Soosooland,
it went from 5th place in July to 2nd place as of August 21st.
And while editing this post on September 14th, Moeum Quiz became 1st place and Haru-Moeum became 2nd place in September’s popularity rankings.
I predicted this game would be a huge hit because there’s already a successful program called Wheel of Fortune.
And to let two players compete against each other, I created a two-player version called Duri-Moeum.
That’s the end of today’s Moeum Quiz development journal.
🧩 You can play Moeum Quiz on Soosooland.
Soosooland is an online platform that offers a variety of educational games, including word puzzles, math quizzes, and brain-training activities.
Soosooland’s games pursue both learning and fun while aiming to reduce dopamine-overloading stimulation that causes addiction.
Come to Soosooland to play Moeum Quiz.
🪄 Dev log originally written in Korean | Translated with ChatGPT
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