Show HN: Build your own Bracket City puzzle(builder.bracket.city)
30 pointsby brgross4 days ago4 comments
  • knuckleheads3 days ago
    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.
    • brgross3 days ago
      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!

      • knuckleheads3 days ago
        Yeah I can’t say the emoji linkage do it for me. Perhaps, though, what about color highlights? Sven’s Sudoku Pad lets you apply colors to cells and this is used to great effect during solves on cracking the cryptic. Flipping that from solving to authoring, if you wouldn’t mind adding the option to allow highlighting of clues from some simple preset color list, that might be able to give people some options.
        • knuckleheads3 days ago
          Ah, in fact, could you add three options: 1. Turn off the display of brackets. 2. Pick colors for each clue. 3. Allow the puzzle to be displayed with a preset fixed width.
  • fakedang3 days ago
    I just want to let you know that I play Bracket City every day. First thing in the morning after waking up and showering is playing Bracket City. :)

    Granted, I've been having quite a shit streak of late.

  • jaspday3 days ago
    I started playing Bracket City after it was featured on HN, and when I learned about the build-your-own feature (through playing the game, as it happened) I built one and shared it with my family. It was a lot of fun! Honestly, I've wanted to make my own puzzles ever since I first played. Actually doing it was like rubbing catnip on the part of my brain that likes picking words apart and putting them back together. Thank you for releasing this!
  • greenpizza133 days ago
    Love this. A head’s up, on mobile there is no way to enter a space. The puzzle maker let me add a space.
    • brgross3 days ago
      yeah...working on adding a space bar/key to mobile suburbs solver!