Aww, thanks! I can't make games to save my life, but boy do I know how to nitpick. I figured it was worth using that skill for good. :-)
So just quickly, in terms of "a puzzle where all the pieces start off active already and you just have to pick the right ones to deactivate": so, yeah, you certainly wouldn't be able to do any kind of "light up when some of the right words are active" (because at the start they all are), or "dim when a correct word is deactivated" (because you'd see it instantly). What I was thinking was that you'd get the feedback specifically when you had the right number of words selected--so for a four-word verse, you wouldn't see any feedback until you'd crossed out all but four of the words. And you couldn't cross out everything and erase things one by one; you'd only get feedback when you were back up to four.
So if the sentence is, I don't know, "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" and the target is "King of despair", the feedback would be something like:
- (showing) Ozymandias, King of Kings: (feedback) nothing, because it's too many words
- despair: nothing, because it's too few words
- King of Kings: "2/3 right", or something like that
- name my works: "nothing right"
Sure, you'll have players who just go "ok, my name is...nothing. ozymandias king of...two. ozymandias king kings...one, so I know 'of' is right and--" but really, anyone who wants to systematically just try every combination is going to do what they're going to do.
Anyway, play around with that. Maybe "one word right" doesn't warrant feedback, so that you can't put in three words, see that you get nothing, and eliminate all three at once. Maybe things only brighten up if it's something like "at least half the words" or "all but one word"--but even those things would be helpful. ("I tried 'name my works' and there's no feedback. I can't rule out all of them, but I do know it's also not 'name my kings' or 'name my despair' or anything else where two of the three words are right"--see, pretty useful!)
Play around with it, see what strikes you. Y'all're probably going to find something you think works well. If this was the result of y'all writing a first game, you've definitely got the instincts to keep going!