🎮 Give Classic, Story, Timed, and Puzzle modes a real shared lifecycle and correct rules

[llinsss]

Problem

The four advertised game modes do not have a coherent lifecycle and several mode-specific transformations never reach the playable state. The UI allows users to choose modes that behave like Classic or fail in edge cases.

Evidence

• every mode exposes initializeGame(), but startGame() does not consistently use its returned word data.
• Puzzle mode creates puzzle metadata, while the core renderer and answer logic continue to display/spell the normal full word.
• Story mode only has story templates for a subset of categories and mutates/reads progress separately from the round lifecycle.
• Timed mode owns timer state and callbacks, but navigation, repeated starts, round completion, and mode changes do not use a shared cleanup contract.
• duplicated loadWord() and showScreen() declarations make the effective lifecycle depend on function hoisting and source order.
• mode state is persisted globally, not per child, and there are no mode tests.

Proposed implementation

Introduce a small mode contract and a single round controller:

prepareRound(context) -> round
presentWord(round, index) -> prompt
validateAttempt(prompt, answer) -> result
onAttempt(result)
onRoundEnd(reason)
dispose()

• Keep navigation, timers, analytics, scoring, hints, audio, and cleanup in the controller.
• Let each mode provide only its distinct prompt/validation/scoring behavior.
• Define graceful behavior for unsupported category/mode combinations.
• Make random puzzle generation deterministic under a seed and ensure anagrams are not unchanged where avoidable.

Acceptance criteria

• Classic, Story, Timed, and Puzzle each have visibly and behaviorally distinct rules documented in the UI.
• Puzzle prompts and validation match the generated puzzle type.
• Starting, restarting, changing modes, going Home, and finishing a round leave no orphan timers/listeners/modals.
• Story mode works or is explicitly unavailable for every selectable category.
• scoring and analytics record the selected mode and its relevant result.
• mode logic is unit tested; one end-to-end test completes and exits each mode.

Out of scope

Splitting the monolith is tracked separately in #6. This issue is about a correct behavioral contract and can be implemented alongside that refactor.

[jd5073356-max]

I've reviewed the game mode lifecycle breakdown and can implement the unified round controller alongside the mode contract. My plan is to isolate mode-specific behaviors into prepareRound, presentWord, and validateAttempt handlers while centralizing timer cleanup, navigation, and scoring in dispose() to prevent orphan listeners and state leaks. I'll also add deterministic seeded puzzle generation, handle unsupported category fallbacks for Story mode, and write unit and E2E tests across all four modes. I can deliver a clean, fully tested PR within 2 days.

[grantfox-oss]

🦊 GrantFox — @jd5073356-max has been assigned to this issue as part of the Third Campaign campaign!

Next steps:

1. Open a Pull Request referencing this issue (e.g., Closes #24)
2. Your PR will be reviewed by the DogStark maintainers

Good luck! Track your progress on GrantFox.