Oh, certainly the hint method lets you work around it, but it's a basic flaw in a puzzle if the only way to get the answer is to ask for hints (or, in this case, to more or less literally spell out the answer).
Fair enough. I wanted the words to not be immediately obvious because if you see water and can just type "swim" then it's not much of a puzzle. It's certainly possible that I overcompensated and made the words too hard to deduce. It's tough for me to tell how difficult the puzzles are when I'm the one making them, and since it was for a game jam I didn't have much time for playtesting. Maybe I could have a difficulty option that changes the amount of letters you get by default. I also think it's fair to say that if anyone don't feel like the "deduce the words from the notes" aspect is working for them, they can just use hints to skip it since that is only one piece of the puzzle, there is still plenty more to do.
I may also need to write a little hint guide to provide some nudges to a few points of the game because I believe you are likely at what will be a common sticking point. I'm not exactly sure how to indicate what to do in game any better without making it too obvious. Who knew designing puzzles was so hard, eh?