Developer Notes
- I intend this to eventually be available on iOS and Android. I've never developed for iOS before.
- I'm just one person. I'm fully employed. This is a side-project. Please be patient.
- There are no servers or databases (I'm cheap, and little to no revenue)
- The only proof of completing a puzzle is taking a screenshot. You can now obfuscate the completed board or share via clipboard.
- Every time I show people, they manage to do things you shouldn't be able to do, like put the same letter in a column multiple times. I am unable to reproduce this issue on my phone in chrome, firefox, and safari. If it behaves weird... all I can say is I'm sorry.
The Puzzles
A new puzzle is made available every night at midnight. Via the menu's history tab, you can go back and play puzzles from prior days. The first puzzle became available on July 14th, 2024. You will also discover, the original puzzles were hard. Too hard. This goes back to a time when I thought people would enjoy expanding their vocabulary, but instead they just rage quit at the choice of esoteric words while waiting for hints.
The puzzles themselves are handcrafted by the developer via an unpublished webapp that acts as an aid. First, the grid size is chosen, and then a random word is selected that fits the largest length of the puzzle. That selects the letters for the puzzle. A list of words sorted by the number of letters is found to see if there's enough "good" words to work with. Often times, there's not, and that process gets repeated 10 or so times in a row. Words are then selected, and all the possible locations it can fit are displayed on the screen. Words are then added one by one, and any combination of letters that are not a valid word, acronym, or abbreviation are highlighted red. Those are then attempted to be resolved. Often times it can't be done, and the word is attempted in a new location or outright abandoned. This process starts with the largest words while there's the least restrictions, and continually shrinks down until only two letter combos are left. It is a very manual, arduos process, so I hope y'all enjoy solving them.