Button may be a verb, but it doesn't have to. Generally, buttons represent one of three things:
1. an action – this is usually a verb in the imperative mood (e.g. Reply, Save, Add to basket)
2. a status – those omit the verb and only specify the new state of an object, which might be a lot of things, like a noun (Spam), an adjective (Favourite) or maybe an adverb (In progress, Later)
3. a navigation item – on the Web, this is better represented as a link, so let's not go into this here
I would argue that "with/without sound" is a clear example of a status here.
It's still way clearer to not omit the verb. "Report spam" vs just "Spam".
Also links are not buttons. There's nothing to get into here. It's straight up wrong from every perspective to think of a link as a button even from an accessibility standpoint.
Or have the "click to start" text cliclable and start the game with sound. Anyone who wants it muted will make sure to first click the mute symbol and then the ambiguity resolves itself anyway.
MathDoku does that and I hate it, because sometimes cookies expire and it plays loud music in the middle of the night when I start it. What's wrong with
I think most people would agree your solution is preferable, but the spirit of this subthread was "what's the smallest change that would improve things" rather than "how could it be redesigned from scratch?"
I would also argue the MathDoku problem is different. That sounds like a mode confusion type issue, where the user expects a certain level of automation but it has been disabled by the system without adequate feedback.
What's wrong with "start with sound" and "start without sound"? That's a guaranteed single click, whereas with a checkbox you need either one or two clicks.
