Love this. A head’s up, on mobile there is no way to enter a space. The puzzle maker let me add a space.
yeah...working on adding a space bar/key to mobile suburbs solver!
Readit Newsbrgross commented on Show HN: Build your own Bracket City puzzle builder.bracket.city... · Posted by u/brgross
brgross commented on Show HN: Build your own Bracket City puzzle builder.bracket.city... · Posted by u/brgross
Very nice! I had been wondering you constructed these. I've enjoyed playing them! A question I would have is how meta do you think can you get with these hints? In crosswords, you often see a lot of references to other clues in the crossword. And so I wonder, with bracket city puzzles, it seems like it would be hard to dip into that self reference, as the tree structure of the clues makes it hard to reference other clues and there's no labels like 2 across you could use.
I've played around a little with this but never found a way to do it that I thought worked for the Atlantic puzzle.
Here's a very bad example I just made of one way you might use emoji to make inter-clue references:
https://suburbs.bracket.city/5Q1O24
too confusing/unsatisfying right now -- but I made the builder partly so that people would experiment...I bet someone will figure out something good!
This is cool! Immediately upon playing with it I find I want more features :-)
- Ability to toggle ocean traversal off/on
- Ability to see route on a map
- AI generated summary of the trip if I took it -- what things did I see along the way? (Should reference real map data, then make up a story; matching local culture etc.)
Love these ideas -- I've also been thinking about an "arcade" mode where you get prompted with a country "in sight" and you have to guess the bearing
I think about this sometimes, so I like the idea, but how do you define “straight” on an oblate spheroid? Great circle, constant direction (e.g. “due east”), or something else?
I went with great circles since that feels like the most “natural” straight line on a sphere — the path you’d walk if you just kept going forward without steering. You could define "straight" as a constant compass direction (I think it's called a "rhumb") -- that would look straight on a Mercator map but would actually require regular steering adjustments to maintain the bearing.
I posted Bracket City to HN on February 24th and the game went live yesterday on The Atlantic (!)
The game will stay free to play (and not require logging in). Also, I'm still making all the puzzles!
HN provided the first real infusion of players that weren't my mom's friends. So thanks everyone.
FWIW The Atlantic's team is amazing and got this live exactly 2 weeks from when we signed the deal.
This happened quick and I feel very lucky. The HN community of solvers keeps me honest with much helpful technical and editorial feedback. I love it all -- here or at mayor@bracket.city
T[Tom who befriended a volleyball] HN
PS my original post! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43160542
brgross commented on Show HN: Bracket City – A daily, exploded (?) crossword puzzle bracket.city... · Posted by u/brgross