A fill-in-the-blank word-swap story game for iPhone and Android · Ages 13+
Pick a famous passage, blank out a few of its words, fill them with worse ones, and hear the result read aloud. The AI that makes it work runs on the phone in your hand, so the passage, the blanks and your nonsense are nobody’s business but yours.
Nothing was uploaded to do this.
Most “smart” apps send your words to a server to be understood. ParaLaff carries a small language model in its pocket and does the understanding on the device. There is no upload step to worry about, because there is no upload step.
A ParaLaff is a passage with a few of its words swapped for yours. Lincoln did the hard part in 1863; you supply the plumbers. The swapped words wear the yellow highlighter, which is how you know whose fault they are.
Four score and seven centuries ago our plumbers brought forth on this trampoline, a new nation, conceived in Marmalade, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created sparkly.
Choose how many words to lose, fill the blanks without seeing where they go, then read the damage. Every screen below is the app, drawn to scale.
The on-device model tags every noun, verb, adjective and adverb. Sliders set how many of each become blanks.
Nothing was uploaded to do this.
The blanks arrive shuffled, so you never know which sentence you are sabotaging. Type a word, roll the dice, or pick from a dictionary.
Dice picks a noun from the chosen dictionary.
Your words return to the passage in yellow highlighter. The phone reads it back, lighting each word as it goes.
Four score and seven centuries ago our plumbers brought forth on this trampoline, a new nation, conceived in Marmalade, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created sparkly.
Everything in the built-in library is yours to mangle without a lawyer present: work old enough to belong to everyone, documents your government published for you, and the words you bring yourself.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice, Moby-Dick, A Tale of Two Cities and their contemporaries. Public domain, clean editions, no publisher headers left in.
Starter set free · Full shelf in PlusThe Constitution’s preamble, the Declaration of Independence and other federal works, which by law belong to the public. Founding documents hold up surprisingly well to a plumber or two.
Starter set free · Full shelf in PlusThe Gettysburg Address is the house favourite: two minutes long, ten sentences, and it has survived worse than us. Only speeches old enough to be public domain are included.
Starter set free · Full shelf in PlusPaste anything: a group-chat message, a recipe, the terms of service you never read. Plus members can also point the camera at a page and capture the text from a photo. It is processed on the phone like everything else.
A few a day free · Unlimited + camera in PlusOur rule for the library: published before 1930, written by the US federal government, or released to the public domain outright. Nothing else gets in, however tempting. What you paste yourself is your business, and stays on your phone.
The dice and the browse button both draw from a dictionary. The plain English one is free and enormous. The themed packs are small, curated and written by us, under names we made up ourselves.
Themed packs are part of ParaLaff Plus. Custom lists are yours to build; we do not feature or promote them.
When the original word is a recognisable kind of thing, the blank asks for that kind of thing instead of “A noun”. Thirteen categories, spotted from a plain word list on the device, not a model and not a server.
A theme restyles the game and the finished story: palette, type, a little ambient animation, a discreet sound or two, and the colour of the highlighter itself. The app suggests one from the calendar; you always have the final say.
conceived in Marmalade
conceived in Marmalade
conceived in Marmalade
conceived in Marmalade
Birthday, and more seasons as they come round. Sound effects respect the mute switch and never talk over the read-aloud voice. A starter set is free; the full collection is part of ParaLaff Plus.
The finished ParaLaff reads itself out in a perfectly serious voice, lighting each word as it is spoken. Something about a synthetic baritone committing fully to “trampoline” does it every time.
Four score and seven centuries ago our plumbers brought forth on this trampoline, a new nation, conceived in Marmalade
Every finished ParaLaff exports as a styled share card or a karaoke video with the read-aloud baked in. Send it wherever your people already are. Both exports are free, and will stay free.
ParaLaff opens on a feed of finished ParaLaffs, with handles, follows, likes and comments. It works the way you expect one to — with one deliberate limit that keeps the promise at the top of this page intact.
Four score and seven years ago our plumbers brought forth on this trampoline, a new sandwich, conceived in Liberty.
Call me Gerald. Some years ago — never mind how moistly precisely — having little or no pocket lint in my purse…
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single badger in possession of a good trombone, must be in want of a nap.
Ruining the classics respectfully since Tuesday. Adverbs a speciality.
A ParaLaff reaches the feed only when its passage came from the built-in library — public-domain books and US government documents. Every post you see is somebody else's joke about Austen or Lincoln, never a page out of their diary.
Paste a message, photograph a page, and the app will happily tag it, blank it and read it aloud — on the phone, as always. The Publish button is simply not offered. This is what keeps your text never leaves your phone a fact rather than a slogan.
Rated 13+. Any ParaLaff can be reported, any account blocked, and reports are read by a person.
ParaLaff is for anyone thirteen and up, and it is built so the adults in the room can relax. Here is what that means in practice, in plain terms, because plain terms are the whole point.
Every first-party word list is written and reviewed by us. The themes are space, fantasy, slang, spooky and the seasons. That is the whole list.
The feed carries only ParaLaffs made from the public-domain library. Report any post, block any account; your own pasted text can never be published.
Passages, blanks and answers are processed and stored on the phone. We could not read them if we wanted to, and we have designed things so that we do not want to.
The free tier shows a few ordinary ads to keep the lights on. Any payment, of any size, removes every ad forever. We will never show an ad to someone who has paid.
Sign in with the account you already have. Our server keeps only what it needs to recognise you, never a password; the privacy policy lists it exactly. Account deletion will live in Settings, in the app.
Lincoln, Austen, Carroll, Melville, Dickens and the Founders. If a passage turns up in an English class, it probably turns up here.
The game is free and stays free. Plus adds the full library, the camera, the packs and the quiet. Lifetime is Plus without the recurring bit. Any payment at all removes every ad, forever.
The whole game, with a starter library
Full core loop, a curated starter library, a few paste-your-own ParaLaffs a day, system voices, share card and video export. A few ads.
Notify meor $4.99 / month
Camera capture, unlimited custom text and the full library, every themed dictionary, theme and font pack, premium voices and highlight styles as they arrive. Zero ads.
Notify meEverything in Plus, forever
One purchase, no renewals. Future per-minute premium voice add-ons are the only thing not included, and we say so now rather than later.
Notify me| Feature | Free | ParaLaff Plus | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
| Play | |||
| Full game loopSliders, shuffled blanks, dice, highlighted result | Included | Included | Included |
| On-device processingYour text never leaves your phone | Included | Included | Included |
| Text | |||
| Built-in library | Curated starter set | Full library | Full library |
| Paste your own text | A few a day | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Camera capturePhotograph a page, play the page | Not included | Included | Included |
| Words and looks | |||
| Dictionaries | Plain English | All themed packs | All themed packs |
| Visual themes | Starter set | All themes | All themes |
| Font packs and highlight styles | Not included | Included | Included |
| Voice and sharing | |||
| Read-aloud with karaoke highlighting | System voices | System + premium voicesComing later | System + premium voicesComing later · Future metered minutes excluded |
| Share card and karaoke videoAlways free. Sharing is how the joke travels. | Included | Included | Included |
| Price | |||
| Ads | A few | None, ever | None, ever |
| Cost | $0 | $24.99 / year or $4.99 / month · 1-week free trial | $59.99 one-time |
13+. The dictionaries are curated, there is no chat, feed or contact between users, and the library is the kind of thing assigned in school. The account and the store listing are for thirteen and up.
Not the passage, not the blanks, not the words you fill them with, not the audio. Those are processed by a language model that runs on the device and are stored on the device.
Three ordinary things do travel: your sign-in details (Apple or Google, exchanged for a session with our server), your purchase receipt (handled by Apple), and a one-time download of the language model itself. If you use the notify-me form on this page, your email address, once it is wired up. The privacy policy lists exactly what each one contains.
The entire game: sliders, shuffled blanks, dice, the highlighted result and read-aloud with the phone’s own voices. A curated starter library, a few pasted-in texts a day, and the share card and karaoke video, which will always be free. The free tier shows a few ads; Plus and Lifetime show none.
Yes, at the same time. iPhone and Android launch together rather than one following the other. Leave your email above and we will tell you the moment either one ships.
Yes. Once the language model has downloaded (once, over Wi-Fi; it is a large file, a few gigabytes on most phones), tagging, playing and reading aloud all work with the radio off. The built-in library is on the device too.
A large plain-English dictionary (free) and our own themed packs: Space Opera, Galactic Adventure, Fantasy Quest, Slang, Spooky and seasonal packs. We write and review every word. You can also build custom lists of your own; we do not feature or promote them.
Paste anything you like, or with Plus photograph a page and the text is captured from the image. Your own text is processed exactly like the library: on the phone, stored on the phone. We never see it. Whether it is safe to turn your aunt’s holiday newsletter into a ParaLaff is between you and your aunt.
Account deletion will live in the app under Settings, before launch, and will remove your sign-in record from our server; your stories were only ever on your phone. Refunds are handled by Apple through your Apple account, as with any App Store purchase. For anything else, support has a monitored address.
One email when ParaLaff reaches the App Store and Google Play, both on the same day. No drip campaign, no “we miss you”. Your address goes on a list, the list gets used once, and you can leave it with one tap.
Coming soon to the App Store and Google Play