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Show HN: Bracket City – A daily, exploded (?) crossword puzzle

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Re: Show HN: Bracket City – A daily, exploded (?) crossword puzzle

#31

Post by tuukkah »

angry_moose wrote: post #17

Pretty fun overall. I really think it at least needs to give you the number of letters though. Some of the clues get really tough since you don't get any information - either number of letters or a few "given" letters from other clues like you get in crosswords. Especially if you get "penalized" for keystrokes - there are some clues that end up as a lot of random guessing because so many things can solve them. A good…

Perhaps the number of letters should be another hint in addition to the first letter. However, I think it's quite obvious that the answer is a TLA when the clue is in the TLA format.

Re: Show HN: Bracket City – A daily, exploded (?) crossword puzzle

#32

Post by xg15 »

brgross wrote: post #10
johnfn wrote: post #9

This is very cool. My only complaint is I should be able to go up a level. e.g. I saw "unwelcome in a China shop" and instantly knew it was "bull" but still had to work through a few more clues before I got there.

have gone back and forth on this point -- so far I've decided that outer brackets should be a hint that guides on you inner brackets, but that you can't skip any clues but I hear you!

Same here with the smurfs. I get the idea, but it becomes a bit awkward sometimes when the only reason you can't skip a clue is that the script won't let you.

I think it might be because this format puts the words into a strict hierarchy of clues, meta-clues, etc, while in a traditional crossword puzzle, the words form more sort of a network, where you can choose the order by yourself.

I wonder if you could restore that property somewhat by arranging the clues into a graph structure instead of a hierarchy. E.g.: (slightly nonsensical example)

[#1: Famous software company] Inc announced a revolutionary new implementation of binary search [#2: The #1 does not fall far from the ___]s today, as well as an improved type of cryptographic [#3: algorithm that needs a [#4: origin of #2, purpose of #1], 3 words]. The ideas are said to have originated from a recently discovered high school notebook of [#5: Co-founder of #1, 2 words] himself.

Re: Show HN: Bracket City – A daily, exploded (?) crossword puzzle

#35

Post by joemi »

I think it'd be interesting to see this implemented more like a crossword, with everything on a grid (though a 1D grid in this case). Then you could see how many letters you're looking for (which helps avoid some ambiguities that I see mentioned here in the comments), and the clues could be moved out of the solving area. The wrapping of the areas that I was trying to solve really threw me, especially when the final result was so much shorter.

Re: Show HN: Bracket City – A daily, exploded (?) crossword puzzle

#39

Post by dewert »

Love it! I'd appreciate a copy text button rather than the current share behaviour.

I'll also weigh in and say that solving sub-clues when you can see the higher-level answer is a good feature, and makes the game more crossword like. I wouldn't allow skipping that

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