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Show HN: Bracket City – A daily, exploded (?) crossword puzzle

(bracket.city)
109 points brgross | 2 comments | 24 Feb 25 15:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.405s | source

Hi hn - I co-own a diner where I co-host a puzzle night that is kind of like a diner-themed escape room. At the last one, I made a puzzle that was crossword-like clues nested in brackets. People at the diner seemed to like it, so I resolved to make it a real game and Bracket City was born: https://bracket.city.

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

  [it contains MSG]
as well as clues that would not make it into a crossword:

  [___ <=== you ===> hard place]
I write all the puzzles and post a new one at midnight ET every day of the week.

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)

1. angry_moose ◴[24 Feb 25 19:11 UTC] No.43163591[source]▶
Pretty fun overall.

I really think it at least needs to give you the number of letters though. Some of the clues get really tough since you don't get any information - either number of letters or a few "given" letters from other clues like you get in crosswords.

Especially if you get "penalized" for keystrokes - there are some clues that end up as a lot of random guessing because so many things can solve them.

A good example - on Feb 19; I was guessing "New York" and "New York City" over and over because I was pretty convinced that's what it was. When I finally had to reveal it, finding out it wanted "NYC" was pretty frustrating.

replies(1): >>43166012 #
2. tuukkah ◴[24 Feb 25 23:05 UTC] No.43166012[source]▶
Perhaps the number of letters should be another hint in addition to the first letter. However, I think it's quite obvious that the answer is a TLA when the clue is in the TLA format.