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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: 0s | 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. jasonpeacock ◴[24 Feb 25 19:28 UTC] No.43163812[source]▶
An annoyance is not accepting "close enough" answers, I was working an older puzzle from a few days ago and the answer was `pulls` and I was trying `pull`. I tried a few other things, clicked for the clue (first letter was `P`), tried `pull` again (does that count against my characters when I repeat failed answers?), tried `pulled`, then finally got `pulls`.

Echoing angry_moose's suggestion, a hint about the # of letters (on mouseover?) would help a lot. Or maybe that would make it too easy?

replies(1): >>43164365 #
2. tarentel ◴[24 Feb 25 20:11 UTC] No.43164365[source]▶
At least in this case, by crossword conventions, the answer has to match the tense of the clue. At least all the ones I did followed this convention including the one you're talking about.

I did not see the one angry_moose is talking about but in a normal crossword, even without seeing the number of letters, if the clue was like, "Most populous city in the US" -> NYC vs "Most populous city in the United States" -> New York City. Again, not sure if that was the case here since I didn't see it. (edit: I went and saw it, the clue had MSG vs Madison Square Garden hence, NYC, not New York City)

Cool puzzle though.