Tidy Baby is a new game made by me and Wyna Liu (of NYT Connections!) that is inspired by the legendary card-based game SET that we assume many of you love (we too love SET).

In SET, you’ve got four dimensions: shape, number, color, and shading, each with three variants.

In Tidy Baby you only have to deal with three dimensions:

- word length (3, 4, or 5 letters) - part of speech (noun, verb, or adjective) - style (bold, underline, or italic)

Like in SET, you are trying to form sets of three cards where, along each dimension, the set is either all the same or all different. If you’ve never played SET there are more details/examples at “how to play” in the game.

The mechanics of Tidy Baby are sort of inspired by a solitaire/practice version of SET I sometimes play where you draw two random cards and have to name the third card that would make a valid set.

In Tidy Baby you are presented with two “game cards” and a grid of up to nine candidates to complete a valid set – your job is to pick the right one before the clock runs out.

Unlike in SET, you get points for “partial” sets where your set is valid on one or two dimensions (but not all three). It’s actually a pretty fun challenge to try to get only sets that are invalid along all three dimensions.

In building the game, we were sort of surprised that the biggest challenge was ensuring that all words were unambiguously one part of speech. You’d be surprised how hard it is to find three-letter adjectives that are not also common verbs or nouns. We did our best!

We’ve got three “paces” in the game: Steady, Strenuous, and Grueling (s/o MECC!)

Let us know what you think!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434580

Points: 37

# Comments: 7

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!

The game has been growing a lot and I wanted to share the latest: a tool that lets anyone make a Bracket City puzzle — specifically a “Bracket Suburb”!

I made this tool to help me construct puzzles, and I’ve been using it every day for months.

After the Atlantic launch, I started to get the occasional inquiry about whether there was a way to make your own puzzle. One guy wanted to make a Bracket City puzzle part of a puzzle hunt he made to propose to his girlfriend (he did it!), and that convinced me it would be fun to make something publicly available.

I got the Atlantic on board with the idea, and we are launching it today with an "example" custom puzzle: a Halloween/horror-themed puzzle by my pal Wyna Liu of NYT Connections fame.

https://suburbs.bracket.city/wyna

And we've got few other fun "celeb" puzzles lined up for later this year.

The thought is that folks can use the builder to make custom puzzles for birthday wishes/event invites/insults/proposals/break ups in addition to “normal” Bracket City puzzles.

I'm also hoping to learn more about the potential of the format – crossword puzzles have benefited so much from the creativity of constructors – I'm hoping bracket puzzles do the same.

The good news is that it’s way easier to construct a bracket puzzle than a crossword. Once you try it, you’ll see why: you have many more degrees of freedom. In a crossword, each added word increases the level of constraint exponentially — every new entry sharply reduces the remaining options for completing the grid. Bracket puzzles are the opposite: as you add clues, you expand the available fodder for new ones.

Anyway, I would love any/all feedback and to try puzzles created by folks here. I’m hoping we will figure out a way to highlight the best community puzzles on the Atlantic soon!

PS and please keep playing the main game / sending me feedback / denouncing me on the subreddit

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45772650

Points: 32

# Comments: 8

But with two additional twists:

1. It loads up historical maps from different years (right now 1 BC, 700 AD, 1000 AD, 1300 AD, 1800 AD, 1900 AD) so you can see what you would hit if you had a time machine AND you went in the direction your phone is pointing

2. Tap a country/territory for an (AI-generated) blurb on what you are pointing at

How it works: Starting from your phone’s bearing, we trace the great-circle in 200 km steps, prefilter candidate countries with bounding boxes (~5–10 instead of ~200), then check ~20 km points along each segment to catch coastlines and stop when the path first enters another country.

Great-circles (https://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html) are why you can hit Australia from NYC, even though when you look at a flat map that can be hard to see.

There might be some weird stuff in the explanations, I haven’t read all 1,400 of them. If you see something weird let me know and I will update it!

The app is free and doesn’t have ads or tracking — your location and bearing are only used locally to figure out where you are and what you’re pointing at

Probably will work best if you hold your phone pretty flat :)

Thank you to André Ourednik and all the contributors to the Historical Basemaps project: https://github.com/aourednik/historical-basemaps)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44962767

Points: 80

# Comments: 40

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44572475

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

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

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43622719

Points: 981

# Comments: 169

but I hear you!

I love crosswords, so it's been fun to write crossword-like clues:

  [it contains MSG]

  [___ <=== you ===> hard place]

Still working on a lot of features/fixes. I'm aware that scoring based on keystrokes is pretty unfair, especially given not-ideal custom keyboard on mobile! Still thinking through the best solution there.

Also fun fact: if you sign up for the email list, you get a special "Word of the Day" email written by James Somers (of https://jsomers.net). The only way to sign up for the email list is to finish a puzzle!

**

(answer key: NYC, ROCK)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43160542

Points: 109

# Comments: 53