I recently had the chance to speak with Paul Cooper, founder of Cooper Banfield, an AI consulting agency, and creator of Tessera, a daily word puzzle. It’s a lot of fun to play, and while I know that there are lots of daily word games to play online these days, Tessera certainly deserves a spot in your rotation. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Micah Blachman: What was your inspiration for building Tessera?

Paul Cooper: When Wordle first came out, I played a lot of it. I got bored of it, but we were quite competitive at home, my wife, my son, and I. Wordle was a big inspiration for me, but I'm a gamer, so I like to play lots of different games. I always wanted to make a game, so I was inspired by Wordle, and also by Claude Code, because I can basically create anything I want now. 

I play a lot of board games at home with my wife and my son. We play a lot of card games, but we also all love Scrabble. I'm not very good at Scrabble, but my wife and son are, so they always beat me. I was inspired by that too.

MB: What did your process look like?

PC: I started off with a sketch. I was kind of pondering different ways to create an addictive daily word puzzle. One of my colleagues was always using a Rubik’s Cube, so I thought there might have been something interesting there—combining a word puzzle and a Rubik’s Cube, but with words instead of colors. I sat down and I had a conversation with Claude, and told him my idea, and showed him the design. 

I'm a designer, so the look and the feel of the UX is really important to me, and as a game player as well, it’s also crucial. Taking all of those things into consideration, I landed on how to create a nice daily word puzzle.

I’m not a game designer, so I relied on family and friends to help me test the game. I needed to make sure the difficulty level was right. I shared it on my Facebook and Twitter, and asked people to play it, and then tell me their thoughts. In the space of just a few days, I went through this iterative design process, building in public, and gradually improved it over time. The first version was a bit rough, but it just got better as more people contributed. It was really a group project.

MB: How do you feel about the complexities of using AI tools?

PC: It’s very easy for people to create slop and put it out there. I see so many websites or social media posts that are obviously AI-generated, and in many cases, that’s fine. What I'm trying to avoid as a designer is for people to immediately realize that my work is AI-generated. I’ll work really hard to make sure it doesn’t look AI-generated. I see AI as an extension to my pen and notebook.