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Show HN: Jigsaw Haiku

jigsawhaiku.com

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Show HN: Jigsaw Haiku

#1

Post by windowshopping »

Hi HN! Jigsaw Haiku was originally designed with my puzzles site The Daily Baffle (https://dailybaffle.com) in mind. But once I had built it, I realized it just didn't quite fit with the aesthetic of the Baffle's other puzzles, so I decided to put it up separately.

While most of the puzzles on the Daily Baffle were intended to be rather challenging, for this one I really just wanted to make something somewhat beautiful and relaxing. It wasn't so much about coming up with a highly original idea or a difficult challenge as much as just combining a few familiar ideas in a pleasant way.

It was coded entirely by Claude, with me carefully prodding it on to achieve the look I wanted. I had hand-coded everything on the Daily Baffle, but those days are past now. I was pretty thrilled with the "window through the fog" effect that CC was able to achieve from my written design spec. I wasn't sure if that would come out right, but it did. It's just a static react app hosted on Render, no backend. The haikus are handwritten with the help of a massive list of generated nature concepts alongside possible metaphor angles. The art is generated by Gemini and ChatGPT. I wish it was hand-painted, but that would be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming and then this puzzle would likely not exist.

Happy to answer any questions, and encourage anyone to check out the Baffle if they like harder puzzles!

Show HN: Jigsaw Haiku
jigsawhaiku.com

Re: Show HN: Jigsaw Haiku

#2

Post by pimlottc »

The borders on the pieces obscure the edge details that you need to help match the pieces up. Often there were pieces with letters that looked like they were needed another piece to complete them but actually they were whole but the border covered the edges.

It would also be nice if I could position pieces freely outside of the board so I could test out potential matches.

In the end, it became easier to just keep trying to place pieces on the board until they stuck together automatically.

Re: Show HN: Jigsaw Haiku

#3

Post by blobdole »

That was a lot of fun!

It would be cool if I could kind of place things "wherever I want" because sometimes I want to test if this fits here or not, and the easiest way is to place the piece there and drop it. Because the borders are less distracting/smaller after dropping it. But if I do that in a place that is not valid, it snaps back to the original position.

I once had to drag two completed chunks sequentially to one side of the puzzle area before I could test a piece I was looking at and discover it was wrong.

Re: Show HN: Jigsaw Haiku

#4

Post by shermantanktop »

pimlottc wrote: post #2

The borders on the pieces obscure the edge details that you need to help match the pieces up. Often there were pieces with letters that looked like they were needed another piece to complete them but actually they were whole but the border covered the edges. It would also be nice if I could position pieces freely outside of the board so I could test out potential matches. In the end, it became easier to just keep try…

I was baffled by this because the rightmost square didn’t seem to have any pieces where the letter would fit vertically — the unplaced pieces had a border which made it impossible to see which might.

Re: Show HN: Jigsaw Haiku

#6

Post by deckar01 »

pimlottc wrote: post #2

The borders on the pieces obscure the edge details that you need to help match the pieces up. Often there were pieces with letters that looked like they were needed another piece to complete them but actually they were whole but the border covered the edges. It would also be nice if I could position pieces freely outside of the board so I could test out potential matches. In the end, it became easier to just keep try…

That would make it very easy and less about the words. They gave you a whole day to finish it for a reason.

Re: Show HN: Jigsaw Haiku

#8

Post by buyTheDip »

Very nice. Challenging and fun. I was able to drop the pieces anywhere to test alignment. When I then moved them around got them next to the right neighbor, they glommed onto each other. No changed needed to have fun!
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