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Show HN: I made an interactive math crossword puzzle with infinite levels

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Show HN: I made an interactive math crossword puzzle with infinite levels

#1
Hey there! I'm the brains behind the math crossword game on my site.

This game is all about making math a little more fun – users just drag and drop numbers to fill in the blanks and move on to the next level if they get it right.

Let me know if face any issues or have any suggestions! :)

Show HN: I made an interactive math crossword puzzle with infinite levels
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Re: Show HN: I made an interactive math crossword puzzle with infinite levels

#3

Are they randomly generated or you have a curated list? The difficulty increase too slow, but after 10 puzzles it starts to get tricky.

Hi! They are randomly-generated but in a controlled way (e.g. I tell it to make 1 equation with 1 option, or 5 equations with 8 options for some level).

I've made the first few levels easy on purpose just to get people used to the game.

And yes, it gets very tricky. Specially after 20-25 puzzles. :)

Re: Show HN: I made an interactive math crossword puzzle with infinite levels

#4
Fun times! I realise the UX might be tricky, but having a way to input things using a keyboard would be cool.

Another issue is that multiplicative identity seems to be used too often. That is, too often the equation boils down to something like "8 × 1 = 8" or "5 ÷ 1 = 5". This would ramp up the difficulty considerably faster, though, so you might want to slow down the complexity increase a bit to compensate.

Oh, and a way to copy the grid into ASCII art would be cool, including for bug reports. For example, after a few puzzles I ran into

  9 4 + 2 = 9 ?
, which is a bit silly. There's only one possibility, and only one given number, so the solution is trivial. And this was after solving ~10 of these.

It would be good if it was stateful. I pressed the Back button by mistake, and when I returned it was back to square one. This could be as simple as saving a starting seed plus an offset per level. Gamifying it with a level counter would be great.

Colour-blind users would probably appreciate more than colour feedback to indicate an error.

Sometimes there are equations which are completely filled in with no holes, so they don't affect the puzzle at all. These could be removed entirely, since they are effectively just noise.

Ordering the numbers which have to be dragged, well, numerically, would be nice - it doesn't make the puzzle any easier or harder, just makes it easier to see how many I have of each digit.

Would you be OK to publish the code online? I'm sure lots of people would want to fork and play around with the idea.

Re: Show HN: I made an interactive math crossword puzzle with infinite levels

#6
This is fun. I'm gonna show it to my 8 year old, who I suspect will like it, but the problems will be too difficult after just a few levels. Would be cool to have some way to limit the difficulty.

This would also do well on paper, so I wonder if it can be printed.

Re: Show HN: I made an interactive math crossword puzzle with infinite levels

#7
I have a puzzle with no correct solution:

https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/T5vHCnVvd3Da.png?o=1

Edit: I read that as 3-x=3. I would assume that when reading up that should be the case. Reading x-3 with = above it doesn't seem intuitive to me.

Re: Show HN: I made an interactive math crossword puzzle with infinite levels

#8

I have a puzzle with no correct solution: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/T5vHCnVvd3Da.png?o=1 Edit: I read that as 3-x=3. I would assume that when reading up that should be the case. Reading x-3 with = above it doesn't seem intuitive to me.

There is a solution. Your 1 and 7 should be swapped.

Re: Show HN: I made an interactive math crossword puzzle with infinite levels

#9

I have a puzzle with no correct solution: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/T5vHCnVvd3Da.png?o=1 Edit: I read that as 3-x=3. I would assume that when reading up that should be the case. Reading x-3 with = above it doesn't seem intuitive to me.

Try swapping the 1 and 7 :)

Re: Show HN: I made an interactive math crossword puzzle with infinite levels

#10
post #4

Fun times! I realise the UX might be tricky, but having a way to input things using a keyboard would be cool. Another issue is that multiplicative identity seems to be used too often. That is, too often the equation boils down to something like "8 × 1 = 8" or "5 ÷ 1 = 5". This would ramp up the difficulty considerably faster, though, so you might want to slow down the complexity increase a bit to compensate. Oh, and…

I also think that multiplication and division by 1 should be pared down (if not eliminated). In general, it'd be nice to favor larger numbers instead of using 1/2/3 so much.
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