Tiny Times Games

My son is almost seven, and he loves games. He'd watch my husband and me play NYT Wordle, the Mini Crossword, Spelling Bee — and he wanted in. Not to be babysat with a tablet, but to actually play. To do what we were doing.

The problem was the vocabulary. The words were too hard, the clues assumed too much, and he'd hit a wall fast. He'd get frustrated — not with the game, but with himself. He'd need to ask for help, and that bothered him, because he could see that we didn't need help. He wanted to be capable, not just included.

That's not a kid problem. That's an access problem.

I work in accessibility design, and the thing I keep coming back to is that accessibility is really about inclusion — making sure people can participate in the things that matter to them. The barrier can be technological, physical, or cognitive. In my son's case, his brain is just not at the same developmental stage as mine and my husband's. That's not a flaw. That's just where he is. And he still deserves to play.

Tiny Times Games is my attempt to remove that barrier — same joy, same daily ritual, same sense of accomplishment. Just scaled to actually fit him.

I built it in React using GitHub Copilot CLI — a similar collaborative vibe to how I built Daily Debriefer with Claude, just a different tool. The suite includes kid-friendly versions of Wordle, the Mini Crossword, Spelling Bee, and a trivia game, because he's obsessed with facts and we sometimes play trivia separately anyway. Every game uses age-appropriate vocabulary. The goal is that he can sit down and play it on his own.

It'll live on his iPad as a PWA — no App Store required. He'll tap an icon on his home screen just like any other app.